Daven Tamayo

Boardroom Tea: Can 17 cousins run a multibillion dollar empire sans fighting?

Article (news)

Salve Ibaňez

ABS-CBN News

<p>Here&#x27;s a secret that will make you rethink everything you know about &quot;Made in Japan.&quot; Those irresistible Japanese gacha toys you obsessively crank out of vending machines in weirdly satisfying random succession? They&#x27;re crafted right here in the Philippines. Bandai also operates a toy manufacturing plant from Batangas—though I won&#x27;t spoil the mystique by telling you if your precious Gundam collection bears a Filipino birthmark.</p><p>Your beloved Epson printer? Thirty years of Philippine precision engineering, built from the ground up in factories that make Tokyo executives beam with pride. But the real treasure lies in what I can&#x27;t tell you—the highly classified products rolling off Aboitiz InfraCapital industrial estates&#x27; assembly lines that made my jaw drop when I learned their identities.</p><p>Gliding through Lima Estates in the electric bus that purred with Swiss-watch precision a week ago, along with my ANC team, I found myself intoxicated by a dangerous thought: what if we could seduce the entire Philippines into this level of infrastructure perfection? Enter Sabin Aboitiz, the charming, guy-next-door president who&#x27;s simultaneously orchestrating the Aboitiz Group&#x27;s industrial estates empire while masterminding the group&#x27;s transformation into the country&#x27;s first techglomerate.</p><p>&quot;Aboitiz is earmarking an unprecedented amount of money to expand its industrial estates business in the next 10 years,&quot; Clifford Academia, head of operations for economic estates, told me as we ogled the huge scale model that stretched all the way from SLEX TR4 to Quezon Province. &quot;The vision is to grow the footprint to about 1,500 hectares, from Malvar to Santo Tomas, Batangas to Alaminos. We are planning to put another central business district right along the national highway.&quot;</p><p>Academia used to build malls in Cebu before being poached by Aboitiz and brought to Lima Estates. I jokingly called the Cebuano-speaking executive &quot;The Mayor&quot; for his commanding presence on the estate grounds. He speaks glowingly of Sabin&#x27;s leadership style: &quot;He challenges the team a lot, but he also listens. He is very hands-on; he visits Lima, Cebu and the other estates frequently. But he wants everybody to discover and innovate and transform things.&quot;</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE TECHGLOMERATE REVOLUTION IS BREWING</strong></div><p>What started as a century-old legacy business is transforming into something radically different under Sabin&#x27;s leadership. The Aboitiz Group isn&#x27;t just talking about digital transformation—they&#x27;re restructuring the entire conglomerate to operate with startup agility while maintaining their hundred-year institutional wisdom. The industrial estates business is one that Sabin approaches with hands-on genius thinking.</p><p>The numbers tell the transformation story: Lima Estates alone has doubled from 350 hectares in 2013 to 1,000 hectares today. But here&#x27;s where it gets interesting—Coca-Cola just announced plans for a massive 42-hectare manufacturing facility at TARI Estate in Tarlac, set to become one of Coke&#x27;s largest facilities worldwide.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE SEVENTEEN COUSINS BOARDROOM</strong></div><p>Behind this transformation sits one of the most fascinating family dynamics in Philippine business. The Aboitiz conglomerate is run by 17 cousins spread across the fourth and fifth generations, creating boardroom discussions that must sound like the world&#x27;s most expensive family reunion. Sabin, as the sole fourth-generation member currently working in the business, navigates this complex family structure while grooming the next wave of leaders.</p><p>&quot;There is no one single answer to that question. It&#x27;s a very difficult one,&quot; Sabin admits in a prior interview about succession planning on CNBC&#x27;s Christine Tan.</p><p>&quot;Sometimes your son wants to become an artist or something and doesn&#x27;t want to work. So, you don&#x27;t have a choice.&quot;</p><p>With a collective family fortune estimated at $3.4 billion according to Forbes, ranking them among the Philippines&#x27; wealthiest clans, the Aboitizes have managed what few family businesses achieve: successful multi-generational growth without destructive infighting.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE PRIVATE SECTOR WHISPERER</strong></div><p>Perhaps more intriguing than the family dynamics is Sabin&#x27;s role as lead convener of the Private Sector Advisory Council, meeting with President Marcos Jr. every other Thursday at 2 PM.</p><p>&quot;Nowhere have I heard in any other country where the president meets with the private sector on a scheduled basis,&quot; he notes in a Facebook interview on an official government account.</p><p>The results speak volumes: privatization of NAIA, digitization of PhilHealth, and accelerated infrastructure projects that were gathering dust for decades. The rail to Clark—a project stalled for over 20 years—is finally being built.</p><p>This isn&#x27;t your typical government-business relationship. The council operates across six sectors: agriculture, hard infrastructure, digital infrastructure, health, tourism, and jobs. Each sector meets quarterly with the president, creating a business-like rhythm to policy discussions that&#x27;s unprecedented in Philippine politics.</p><p>I&#x27;ve pestered several of my CEO friends from within the council, and they all shared fascinating anecdotes about how efficiently things get done since the major conglomerates are represented by their top officials. The challenge, they hint, lies in managing the strong personalities and competing priorities when titans of industry gather in one room.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>BUILDING THE INFRASTRUCTURE BACKBONE</strong></div><p>The Aboitiz strategy extends far beyond traditional boundaries. Their airport portfolio now includes Mactan-Cebu International Airport plus two additional concessions in Laguindingan and Bohol. The airport business model is elegantly simple: fixed costs with revenue directly proportional to passenger traffic, creating a straight line to profitability as tourism grows.</p><p>But the real infrastructure play is in economic estates, where Aboitiz employs about 110,000 people across their developments. These aren&#x27;t just industrial parks—they&#x27;re creating entire ecosystems where people can &quot;live like they&#x27;re in Metro Manila but outside,&quot; complete with schools, jobs, and urban amenities in provincial settings.</p><p>The SLEX TR4 extension to Quezon represents their vision in action: connecting Malvar, Santo Tomas, and Alaminos while establishing a new central business district along the national highway. It&#x27;s decongestion strategy with economic multiplier effects.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>THE COCA-COLA COUP</strong></div><p>The $1.8 billion acquisition of Coca-Cola Beverages Philippines wasn&#x27;t just diversification—it was strategic positioning for the growing Filipino middle class. &quot;We believe that the growing middle class of the country and the high growth rates is benefiting consumer, and to be there with great brands is probably better than building them,&quot; Sabin explains.</p><p>This consumer play connects seamlessly with their infrastructure investments. Better airports drive tourism, which creates demand for consumer goods, which justifies more infrastructure investment. It&#x27;s vertical integration across entirely different sectors.</p><p>The techglomerate experiment is just beginning. Whether the Aboitizes can successfully merge century-old institutional wisdom with startup agility may determine not just their own future, but the template for how Philippine conglomerates evolve in the digital age.</p><p>Final little tidbit: If I were to rate our country&#x27;s top billionaires in terms of who can speak Filipino most authentically, Sabin would claim the top spot. His simple Filipino accent is spot-on and refreshingly genuine.</p><div><em>Boardroom Tea comes out every Wednesday</em></div>

<p>The Aboitiz conglomerate is run by 17 cousins spread across the fourth and fifth generations with a fascinating family dynamic.</p>

The Aboitiz conglomerate is run by 17 cousins spread across the fourth and fifth generations with a fascinating family dynamic.