BPI to rebuild head office in Makati

The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) said on Thursday that plans are afoot to rebuild its head office in Makati City.

In a press conference, BPI president and CEO Cezar Consing said the bank will start demolishing its current building at the corner of Ayala Avenue and Paseo de Roxas in 2019.

“Our plan is towards the end of the year, and we’ve actually started, we’re vacating,” Consing noted.

“And then next year we’ll start tearing it down and then we’ll build on this site again. It’s a site that we believe is good for us,” he said.

Expected to be completed in the next three to four years, a new building will replace the current BPI head office which was erected in 1978.

While the construction is ongoing, employees will likely be housed in different locations across Metro Manila such as Makati, TriNoma, and Alabang.

“We’ll sort of hold office in different (places) for a few years,” he said, noting the new building will make room for additional office space and maybe even spaces for lease.

“We don’t have the architectural plans yet, but we obviously plan to maximize it ... The fact is, we are capacity constrained right now,” he said.

“Maybe because of high growth rates, we may not be able to lease it. We will calibrate this over time,” Consing noted.

The bank intends to shoulder the cost of building the new BPI head office on its own, but Consing did not cite how much it would cost.

With assets valued at P1.636 trillion, BPI closed 2017 as the third-largest bank in the country. —VDS, GMA News