US-based Cerberus submitted unsolicited proposal for Subic Bay airport — SBMA 

By Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio, Reporter

Cerberus Capital Management LP has submitted an unsolicited bid to operate the Subic Bay International Airport, a Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) official said on Monday.  

The US investment firm proposed to “take over” operations of the Subic airport as part of its plan to revitalize the facility, which once formed part of a bigger US naval base before to its closure in the 1990s, SBMA Deputy Administrator Vicente A. Evidente, Jr. told a House of Representatives hearing. 

“Cerberus has… submitted an unsolicited proposal to take over the Subic Bay International Airport,” he told lawmakers. 

The US firm’s expansion plans at Subic Bay come amid renewed US interest in expanding its footprint in the Philippines amid China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.  

Cerberus already operates part of a 310-hectare lot of a former South Korean-owned shipyard west of the airport for which it had submitted an unsolicited bid. 

The US Marine Corps has already leased a 57,000-square-foot warehouse at the bay to stage vehicles and engineering equipment, while the US Navy is also eyeing a nearby 25,000-square-meter climate-controlled facility for lease, USNI News reported. 

“There is a permanent forward deployed presence of US forces in the port of Subic Bay,” Mr. Evidente said. “There is a constant rotation of US Navy warships every time due to the fact that Scarborough Shoal is only located 200 kilometers from the port.” 

The Philippines and China have been at loggerheads over disputed features in the South China Sea, resulting in clashes at sea as Manila pushes back against what it describes as Beijing’s encroachment of waters within its exclusive economic zone. 

Beijing claims nearly all of the strategic waterway via a U-shaped, 1940s nine-dash line map that overlaps with the exclusive waters of the Philippines and neighbors like Vietnam and Malaysia despite a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that voided its claims.