PH’s most fascinating, powerful tycoons

During the past week, I was privileged to interview three of the most fascinating and powerful tycoons in the Philippines—Roberto V. Ongpin, the CEO of Alphaland, PhilWeb, ISM and Atok Big Wedge Mining; Ramon S. Ang, the president of San Miguel Corp. and CEO of Petron Corp., and Manuel V. Pangilinan, the chair of PLDT, Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and TV5. What they are doing will determine the future of our country.

I spent more than two hours with Bobby Ongpin between sips of XO one evening, more than two hours with RSA over lunch, and an hour with MVP over coffee and nothing else—all in their respective gleaming corporate headquarters, Alpha-land Southgate Tower, San Miguel Ortigas and Me-ralco Ortigas.

A common thread among the three is their bullish outlook about the Philippines and its future, the enormous amounts of investments they are pouring in key areas of the economy—real estate, energy, tourism, infrastructure and basic services; and the dedication and hard work they invest in their projects.

If you want to do big business in the Philippines, they are the go-to guys.

Yes, they make enormous amounts of money but they earn it the old-fashioned way, through hard work and perseverance and very difficult judgment calls in business. They also have among the best brains in the businesses they are in.

In this column, I discuss Bobby Ongpin.

He wants to build the country’s best and most exclusive membership club in Makati, the best office building combined with penthouse suites for high-end but security-conscious individuals, on Ayala Avenue, Ma-kati; the best marina by the Manila Bay, the best polo club and vacation estates, and the best chain of exclusive island resorts.

Bobby or RVO presides over a business empire whose portfolio includes property, energy, brewery, communications, In-ternet gaming, Pagcor e-Games Café, hotels, resorts development and investments.

“The economy is on a roll,” Ongpin exults, “so almost anything that you do will succeed.” One of them is real estate. “It is very cheap,” he says. “We are the cheapest if you compare us among all the other countries.”

Ongpin represents Ashmore, a British investment fund that is one of the world’s largest with $41.6 billion in funds under its management. Ashmore, he says, “has invested about $2 billion in the Philippines.”

Ongpin invested in San Miguel Corp. thru Q-Tech Alliance Holdings, a company where Ashmore, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir’s eldest son Mirzan and Top Frontier Investment Holdings are partners.

Q-Tech Alliance bought the 19.91-percent SMC holdings of Japan’s Kirin Holdings in February 2009 for P39.6 billion. In November 2009, Top Frontier bought the 28 percent of SMC held by the company’s retirement fund.

Ongpin is part owner of Top Frontier Investment Holdings which today owns 38.57 percent of San Miguel Corp. while Q-Tech Alliance Holdings Inc. owns another 9.19 percent.

SMC in turn, owns, 49 percent of Top Frontier. Ongpin reveals he owns 20 percent of Top Frontier, Ayala scion Iñigo Zobel 20 percent, and Joselito “Butch” Campos of the Unilab group, also 20 percent. Ashmore owns the remaining 40 percent.

Ashmore acquired more than 90 percent of Petron Corp., the country’s largest petroleum refining and marketing company, and later sold it to SMC.

Ongpin also represents the Kuok property and hotel group in the Philippines which has a hotel and mall complex on an 8.3-hectare property on EDSA and Shaw Blvd., and three other hotels—in Makati (“We recovered our cost in 24 months,” he says), Mactan, Cebu; and Boracay. All four are the premium hotels in their locations.

A fifth hotel Shangri-La, with 500 rooms, is being erected at Fort Bonifacio at a cost of P12.9 billion. “It costs $300,000 per room,” estimates Ongpin. His group will own 20 percent of Shangri-La at the Fort and Malaysia’s richest, billionaire Roberto Kuok, 87, the controlling 80 percent. Self-made, Kuok is a man who values integrity more than intelligence.

With a Harvard MBA, Ongpin rose to become the youngest chairman and managing partner of SGV and Co., the Philippines’ largest professional services firm, from 1964 to 1979. He was minister of trade and industry from 1979 to 1986.

Alphaland Corp. is the biggest of Ongpin’s four companies in assets of P16.5 billion and market cap of P90 billion, making it one of the biggest property companies. Atok-Big Wedge Co. has a market cap of P152.7 billion, Philweb has a market cap of P18.87 billion, and ISM P7.74 billion.

Alphaland has set its sights on other ambitious projects—the P5-billion Makati Place at the intersection of Ayala Avenue, Buendia and Malugay Streets; the 35-story Alphaland Makati Tower; the Alphaland Bay City of bayside serviced apartments and a Marina Club that can accommodate 70 yachts and one super yacht; the 424-hectare Balesin Island resort; the 500-hectare Alphaland Bora-cay Gateway across Boracay; and Fort Boni Shangri-La. –TONY LOPEZ, Manila Times

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