BizNewsAsia's 2009 BREW Awardees

BizNewsAsia’s 2009
BREW awardees


TERESITA SY

She is a rara avis of business, the most powerful woman CEO in the Philippines today, having taken on greater responsibilities in managing the SM banking, retailing, and property group. She nurtured Shoemart into what it is today, the largest, the best, most experienced and most elegant department store chain in the country. She is the chairman of Banco de Oro, the biggest bank in the Philippines with assets of P793.5 billion, deposits of P625 billion, loan portfolio of PP440 billion, equity of P61 billion, 665 branches and 14.6 percent of the market.
She is the vice chairman of SM Investments Corp., the holding company for SM which has 102 stores nationwide, including, by yearned, 36 malls (four of them among the world’s largest), 201 cinemas, 35 department stores, 26 supermarkets, 18 SaveMore branches, 16 Hypermarkets, and 12 Makro wholesale outlets. The malls are visited by 2.5 million people a day or 900 million a year. SM opens stores at the rate of 11 per year. SM’s property group is in residential, commercial, leisure and hotel development and among the fastest growing in the industry.

Ambassador AMABLE “KING” AGUILUZ V
He owns and manages the largest computer school system in Asia with 208 campuses and 150,000 students in eight countries. The IT school system keeps expanding with operations in the Middle East, China and the United States.

His pioneering work in developing an IT-enabled and skilled manpower enabled the Philippines to attract business process outsourcing (BPO) which business has now over 400,000 seats and revenues of $5 billion. The BPO industry, in turn, is a major source of demand for office space and housing for call center workers, sustaining the property boom.

In real estate, he has piled up P13 billion worth of assets, enough for him to dream to become one of the country’s three largest developers over the next five years.



Secretary ACE DURANO

The youngest Tourism secretary and the youngest member of the Arroyo cabinet, he rationalized the country’s tourism drive, formulated well-focused campaigns, and launched ecological tourism programs that market the vibrancy and natural endowments of Philippines travel sites. As a result, Philippine tourism is booming, one of the few in Asia to show growth in arrivals amid the global economic slowdown. The country’s tourism machinery is rated the best-improved and best performing in Asia.

From barely two million when he took over the DOT in 2004, arrivals from abroad are reaching three million per year, which added to the five million domestic arrivals, make for eight million in tourists annually, triggering a massive hotel buildup to solve a serious room shortage.

ANTONINO T. AQUINO
He is the Management Association of the Philippines’ “Management Man of the Year”, a well-deserved plum given that he does not own the companies he has managed and thus he didn’t have an easy time as their CEO. As CEO of Manila Water from 1999 to 2008, he turned a virtually moribund public service company into a publicly listed private firm and steering it thru remarkable growth and profitability.

At Ayala Land, his latest assignment, he and his management team are taking steps to further grow the business and capture more value by expanding in the provinces and focusing on a market Ayala paid little heed to before – the so-called bottom of the pyramid (BOP) which happily happens to be the biggest consumer market in the Philippines and which oftentimes is recession-proof.


BANSAN C. CHUA

He set up I-Remit, the largest non-bank Filipino-owned remittance company with $1 billion in remittance business and operations in 27 countries providing quality, efficient and affordable remittance services to overseas Filipino workers who now number over ten million. His Sterling Bank of Asia specializes in supporting the development and growth of small and medium enterprises. His Surewell Equities, Inc. develops affordable and first class homes and secure investment outlets for savings. As president of the Philippine Retirement, Inc., he seeks to bring retirees, expats and Filipinos, to the Philippines, for them to live, work and invest in the country, thus opening up a new market for the homebuilding industry.

CamSur Governor “LRAY” VILLAFUERTE
He transformed Camarines Sur, once a dirt poor typhoon-battered province of Bicol, into CamSur, the first LGU developed as an economic enterprise. It is now one of the country’s ten richest in income, an emerging premier tourist destination and a global venue for sports such as wakeboarding, dragon boat racing, marathon and Iron Man, the Holy Grail of Triathlon. CamSur is the first LGU-operated IT park and tourism zone in the country.
CamSur Watersports Center (CWC) is one of the best wakeboarding lakes in the world. CamSur’s Caramoan beach resort has become a popular destination overnight, thanks to savvy marketing and global television exposure with five Survivor franchises using it as their location.

Albay GOVERNOR JOEY SALCEDA
He helped improve the standard of living of the people of Albay during his incumbency as governor and its CEO, with his focus on the five Es—economy, education, environment, equity and health. He made the province a model for disaster preparedness and zero casualty, and for climate change mitigation and adaptation. No LGU executive has embraced disaster preparation and climate change mitigation and adaptation with more passion and intelligence. His vision is to make Albay a little California during the early part of the 21st century, a progressive ecosystem, clean and green.
He is one of the country’s preeminent economic advisers, an expertise honed by a distinguished work in the private sector and 12 years of public service.

RAUL T. CONCEPCION
As chairman of the Consumer and Oil Price Watch, he has done a tremendous job seeking more reasonable pricing from the oil companies and manufacturers of basic goods, exposing their lust for excessive profits and their manipulative attempts to hide their true cost of goods. His is the genuine consumer advocacy-- consistent, conscientious, compelling, and effective.
He has also called for true energy reform to bring down the cost of energy the cost of most basic goods, including oil. He puts his money where his mouth is, buying expensive newspaper ads to make his point and call the attention of all concerned in the name of reasonable pricing.
His Concepcion-Carrier airconditioning joint venture is one of the most efficient and innovative in the world.


ELIZABETH H. LEE
She has succeeded where many men of greater talent and training have failed—in the art of marketing, management and group leadership. As president of the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers, Inc. (CAMPI), which groups the country’s 12 largest auto companies, she helped save the industry from collapse with a vigorous campaign against smuggled second-hand vehicles which for a time were dominating the domestic market and brought it to its highest level of sales in the past ten years.

At Universal Motors Corp., she developed the “Ur Van Ur Business” (UVUB), a business plan and a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program to train buyers to become entrepreneurs and provide them a vehicle for income growth, career fulfillment, and lifestyle enhancement.

Architect FELINO PALAFOX JR.
He is the Philippines’ foremost exponent of green architecture, green urbanism and sustainability as typified by the principle that people must work, play and worship no farther than 400 meters from their home. In design, the focus is on the triple bottom line –the economy, environment, and social equity. His Palafox and Associates is the largest architectural firm in Southeast Asia and since 2003 one of the top 200 in the world, with projects in 32 countries and clients who are among the largest and most prestigious land developers, building owners, tycoons and taipans, not to mention sheiks, kings and sultans.
He puts his money where his mouth is. He gave up a $1-million fee to protest a Korean client’s attempt cut down 366 trees in an urban area of Subic. After Ondoy, he recommends developers to reckon with the worst flood events
and disasters of the past 100 years to build for the future.

Marikina Mayor MARIDES FERNANDO
As mayor from 1998 to the present, she made Marikina one of the most dynamic, progressive and green cities in the Philippines, a model for good governance, IT preparedness, environmental sensitivity, and a culture of creativity and discipline. She effectively leveraged the city’s four key assets – infrastructure, innovation, human capital, and quality of place. Five years ago, Marikina was already one of the three most livable cities in Metro Manila. Three years later, it became the most competitive metro city in the Philippines.

Marikina was a veritable Little Singapore when Ondoy struck on Sept. 26, 2009. Still, the city displayed remarkable grit and resiliency, cleaning in just one month mountains of typhoon debris that would have taken at least six months to dissipate. Now, that’s governance.

MANUEL PAOLO A. VILLAR
As the Wharton-educated Chief Financial Officer of Vista Land and Landscapes (VLL), the largest homebuilder in the Philippines with 250,000 homes, he infuses the rigorous discipline of financial management and a creative and innovative eye to enable the company to stay ahead of its competitors while helping put the P53 billion enterprise on a firmer financial footing and more sustainable growth pattern. An IPO on 2007 was hugely successful, raising P14 billion which will help fund expansion in the provinces. VLL has four distinct brands of business units -- Brittany, Crown Asia, Camella Homes, and Communities Philippines, and a vast housing portfolio, from low-cost to luxury houses.


REGHIS M. ROMERO II
After turning Tondo’s Smokey Mountain dump, from a symbol of national poverty and misery into a decent housing community for the masses and a hub for business and having built the world-class Harbour Centre Port Terminal, he has turned his sights on mass transit with an elevated railway from Manila to booming Cavite and a railway from Balintawak to Central Luzon. He is modernizing the Manila North Harbor to enhance its status as the premier domestic port and spur trade and commerce in the country. North Harbor, in turn, will be linked to expressways north and south of Manila. In between, he has been building low-cost houses for the poor and the lower middle class, greatly enhancing the life and lifestyle of many Filipinos.

JOSE RENE D. ALMENDRAS
As the president and CEO, he must enhance substance and performance in the area of sustainability and poverty alleviation at Manila Water which has been cited as one of the Ten Greenest Companies in Asia and which is being used as a template by the Ayala Group in making sustainability a core value of its business. Manila Water brought safe and reliable drinking water 24/7 to one million poor Filipinos in its concession area and gave business contracts, such as making street signs or painting jobs, to the communities rather than to traditional suppliers.
Ayala now puts sustainability above profit-making and looking at financial statements and balance sheets.



REYNALDO G. DAVID
A veteran banker of more than 40 years, he made state-owned Development Bank of the Philippines very liquid (awash with cash), intensely focused, and immensely profitable. DBP did better financially than many of its peer banks in the private sector. He also brought the bank into relatively new and innovative areas of banking such as financial advisory, mergers and acquisitions, investment banking and of late, Islamic banking.
He did so even while coping with difficult economic scenarios and remaining true to DBP’s mission, which is to promote the country’s development by providing relatively medium and long-term, reasonably-priced financing to major as well as small and medium enterprises and building the country’s logistics network and nautical highways. The Holy Grail of DBP, he likes to explain, “is development banking, rather than commercial banking” which means the bank can lose money as long as development takes place since the bottomline is benefit to the people. It did not lose money.


DELFIN J. “DING” WENCESLAO JR.
He has 45 years of construction experience, from road, highway and bridge construction, foundation piling, land reclamation to businesses like land banking, real estate development, and mass housing. High-caliber service and quality work are his hallmarks. His D.M. Wenceslao and Associates, Inc. (DMWAI) built World Bank-financed highway projects in Iloilo and Panay and the major roads, drainages, utilities and bridges in Parañaque’s 204-hectare Asean Business Park.
His specialty is forming construction consortia to handle super infra projects, the latest of which is the P5-billion, 88-km North Luzon Expressway extension from La Paz, Tarlac to Rosario, La Union, cutting travel time to Baguio by several hours. Consortia system creates infra assets at zero cost to the government which in turn generates tax revenues and jobs, thus stimulating the economy.
He believes construction is a major sector of the economy, essential to infra development and as training ground for some two million skilled Filipino construction workers deployed abroad.