An M.V.P. at life
MANNY V. PANGILINAN is one of the biggest names in the Philippine business scene, whose initials stand for the mostsought after award in a sport competition. MVP, as he is often called, is the best player in his own game, and has proven how will and determination can get anyone a great shot at success.
Mr. Pangilinan, who is turning 72 years old tomorrow, has achieved a lot in life. He is currently at the driver’s seat of many of the country’s biggest and most inf luential business entities that contribute significantly to nation building, including Metro Pacific Investments Corp. ( MPIC); PLDT, Inc.; MediaQuest Holdings, Inc.; Philex Mining Corp.; Manila Electric Co. ( Meralco); and Maynilad Water Services, Inc.
Behind MVP’s awe-inspiring accomplishments is a tale of struggle and adversity. Unlike other business personalities who inherited a good fortune from their families, Mr. Pangilinan started from nothing. His journey to success was not easy; he also stumbled and suffered from failures.
Born on July 14, 1946, Mr. Pangilinan is the second son of Dominador Pangilinan, who was a messenger at Philippine National Bank, and Soledad Velez-Pangilinan, who was a homemaker. They lived with his grandparents for a while in Sampaloc, Manila and soon transferred to Little Baguio, in San Juan.
“Our house stood right on the boundary of a squatter settlement. But from my bedroom window, I could see, smell, and feel the lives of the real poor,” Mr. Pangilinan said during a commencement address to the graduating students of Philippine Women’s University in 2013, recalling his early life as a student, a professional manager, an overseas Filipino worker and a successful entrepreneur.
Mr. Pangilinan said that he owed much of his achievements to education. In his elementary and secondary years, he was a scholar at San Beda College, where he only had a daily allowance of 25 centavos for snacks and bus fare.
He continued his tertiary education at one the most reputable and expensive universities in the country, Ateneo de Manila University. While a lot of his classmates had cars and others even had their own drivers, he only had a P10 weekly allowance. Despite the lack of financial support, Mr. Pangilinan graduated cum laude with an economics degree.
“After college at Ateneo, I wanted an MBA in the United States. But I knew no money was available for this. So I had to find a way myself. Fortunately, Procter and Gamble offered a rare scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. It was a national competition. I entered and won,” Mr. Pangilinan said.
The professional career of Mr. Pangilinan started after he completed his studies abroad. He began as an executive assistant to the president of a local gas company, Fil Oil, with a salary of P1,000 a month. After several years, he decided to try his luck abroad, where he worked for a Philippine investment bank based in Hong Kong, Bancom International, and later on, for a joint venture investment bank with American Express.
In 1981, Mr. Pangilinan, with the help of some clients he met in the region, founded the First Pacific Company Limited in a 50- square-meter office space in Hong Kong. From a small enterprise, having only six people, First Pacific grew into a large investment management and holding company with key interests in consumer food products, infrastructure, natural resources and telecommunications. The company is now earning billions of dollars a year and employs more than 102,000 people as of December 2017.