THE Social Security System on Friday sold its 20 holdings in EPCI Banking Corp. (now merged with Banco de Oro) for P17 billion, putting to a close a nine-year-old controversy over the investment made by the pension fund during the time of former President Joseph Estrada.

The SSS sold its 338.13 million Banco de Oro shares for P51.11 a share to the SM Group, the biggest stockholder in BDO, on the eve of the latter’s 50th anniversary.

The SSS selling price translates to P92 per share when reckoned in terms of EPCI shares, the same price at which the Government Service Insurance System sold its 10.7 percent last year. The sale raised P9 billion for GSIS.

The SSS held 187 million shares in EPCIBank. This was equivalent to 338 million BDO shares after the merger where 1.8 shares of BDO were issued for every share of Equitable-PCI.

SSS bought the EPCIB shares at P86 each in 1999. The investments of SSS and GSIS laid the ground for the merger of Equitable Banking Corp. and PCI Bank.

Estrada allegedly directed the pension funds to make the investments in return for a commission.

SSS president Corazon de la Paz-Bernardo earlier said she would never sell the EPCI Bank stake for less than the P10.2 billion or P56.50 per share. This was the same price BDO paid for the Go family’s 24.7 percent stake in EPCI Banks.

Last year, the SSS netted P7.11 billion from the sale of its holdings in San Miguel Corp.

Banco de Oro earlier sought to buy the 20 percent SSS stake in EPCI Bank, but the deal was blocked by the Supreme Court after a group of SSS members filed a complaint alleging that the sale was illegal for not going through a public bidding.

That court order said the ban has been lifted.

The earlier agreement was for P43.50 a share.