Biz Buzz: Stronger next year

The University of the Philippines’ men’s basketball team amazed everyone with its superb run in this year’s edition of the University Athletics Association of the Philippines (UAAP) sports events, but none of that would have been possible without the support of key corporate sponsors.

Chief among this group of faithful supporters, of course, is Robina Gokongwei-Pe and her branch of the Gokongwei empire, Robinsons Supermarket, Handyman and Robinsons Farms.

Robina—who is a UP alumna as well as a former staffer of the school’s newspaper, The Philippine Collegian—is the basketball team’s longest running benefactor, having been donating steadily to the cause for eight years now.

In fact, Robina has to put up with taunts from her siblings and hurdle the famous frugality of her family when she started bankrolling the team in 2010, when its UAAP record was ... 0-14. That’s right: Not a single win in the basketball tournament (the record improved marginally over the years from 2-12, 1-13, back to 014 and so on).

Robina is not about to stop now, especially since the UP men’s basketball team is near the pinnacle of collegiate sports success.

Another major funder who is expected to return next year is the Wongchuking family through its “Mighty Sports” program.

The Wongchukings—the younger brother, Cesar, is an alumnus—wasthe official outfitter of the team this year and will likely be involved in other aspects of supporting the team next year, not least of all financially.

Cesar told Biz Buzz that, in particular, he has been a big supporter of coach Bo Perasol ever since his college years.

Other major supporters like real estate man JJ Atencio, 3M Corp. and lighting firm Nxled are also expected to make a comeback next year to finance what could be another trip to the finals for the team.

With millions of pesos supporting the UP team and the other teams’ backers also expected to ante up their support, expect an exciting UAAP season 82 next year. —DAXIM L. LUCAS

Best Philippine banks

For the longest time, HSBC Philippines has been trying to wrest the coveted title of “best foreign bank” from perennial winner Citibank but repeatedly failed to do so.

Well, this year, HSBC finally did, being named by The Asset as the best global bank in the Philippines and—for the first time ever—dethroning Citibank from the top of the local foreign bank heap.

The award caps off the long career of banker Wick Veloso at the helm of HSBC, having been named its first Filipino country head.

Veloso left HSBC recently and moved to Philippine National Bank last month where he will be facing a whole new set of challenges that will be sure to test his arsenal of banking skills, given PNB’s vastly larger operations and branch network, as well as its more ... shall we say ... “dynamic” shareholder structure.

Meanwhile, The Asset also named BDO Unibank as the best domestic bank in the Philippines—an award it has been repeatedly getting over the last few years.

That’s really no longer a surprise, given the breadth of the bank’s operations, which grew to become the country’s largest financial institution under the leadership of Nestor Tan.

What will Tan do for his next trick, having been at the top for so long? He won’t have to look for his next challenge as the banker expects 2019 to be a very challenging year for the industry.

Brace yourselves. —DAXIM L. LUCAS

Banner year

More and more business owners are rewarding their employees with offshore travel perks when the team outperforms targets.

Leechiu Property Consultants (LPC), the real estate brokerage firm set up by industry veteran David Leechiu three years ago, expects to end this year as the market leader. LPC’s output has reached an industry record high and double the best year’s output posted by Leechiu’s former company.

LPC achieved this feat of being the country’s largest real estate brokerage in just the third year of operations.

To celebrate such milestone and reward its staff, Leechiu took all of his employees to overseas outings two weeks ago. Some 62 brokers and research staff went to Tokyo for a four-day, all-expense-paid vacation. Some 83 administration staff were flown to Singapore also for four days of sightseeing, including the drivers, messengers, security guards, janitors, clerks and finance and accounting staff plus their spouses and children (if married) or their parents and siblings (if single).

“We helped most especially the admin colleagues because this trip allowed many of them to visit a foreign country for the first time [and with their loved ones], ride a plane for the first time, own a passport for the first time, travel for the first time and, most fundamentally, be served by a foreigner for the first time—because all their lives, especially for the guards and janitors, they live all their lives serving other people but they have never been served to by others, [but] this time, foreigners are the ones serving them,” Leechiu said.

LPC covered all their airfare, bus and train fare, hotel, food, tickets to theme parks and museums and tours, and gave them pocket money enough to shop for and with their families.

“I’m most proud of being able to bring their children abroad, first time in a First World environment, ride and enjoy in theme parks and zoos—Universal Studios and Sentosa—and, hopefully, that plants the seed of inspiration and ambition to wake them up to study and work hard and aspire for greater things in life so that while their parents may be drivers or cleaners for us, they can have a vision of their lives to do well and strive for higher and more,” Leechiu added. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA

Time is money

Does time equate to money? A Filipino-led Singapore tech startup appears to be making waves based off that concept.

We’re taking about Acudeen Technologies Pte. Ltd., which knows some business owners cannot wait months to collect their receivables. So they simply buy these for cash, at a discount of course, and assume the collection themselves. Acudeen’s CEO and founder

Magellan Fetalino says the company has financed more than 1,000 small to mediumsize enterprises (SMEs) to the tune of P500 million.

For 2018, it is earmarking more than P5 billion to take receivables off the hands of even more SMEs.

There are many reasons why a small business might want to sell discounted receivables. They might need the cash for expansion or in some cases, might not have access to favorable credit terms.

“SMEs anywhere in the world always have the biggest contribution to a country’s GDP, and yet this is the segment that is least supported by our financial institutions,” said Fetalino, referring to the latter reason.

The company was established in 2016 and it has been on a fast growth pace since then. Last year, it signed a contract with Rizal Microbank to finance the acquisition of receivables. In July came a deal with Union Bank of the Philippines to scale up its platform. —MIGUEL R. CAMUS