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From struggling student to Forbes rich list in five decades

By Roel Landingin

Published: December 28 2009 02:00 | Last updated: December 28 2009 02:00

Lucio Tan is always in a hurry. He bought a helicopter in 1968 to be able to move quickly when visiting his factories - making him one of the first Filipino businessmen to own one.

At the office, he attends up to seven meetings simultaneously - associates see him as a blur moving from one room to another.

It's a trait that has served Mr Tan very well, catapulting him from struggling working student in the late 1950s to being the country's second-richest man just five decades later. Today, with a net worth of $1.7bn, according to Forbes magazine, he is wealthier than any of the scions of the elite Spanish families whose companies are now more than a hundred years old, or most of the ethnic Chinese merchants who began to build their businesses right after the second world war.

Mr Tan, 75, owns the Philippines' biggest cigarette company, its largest airline and flag carrier, the fifth and 11th biggest banks, one of south-east Asia's biggest hog farms, the country's only other brewery, and about a hundred other businesses. He also owns prime properties in several cities in China and Hong Kong.

It is a remarkable rise for somebody who became a Philippine citizen only in 1960 and formed what was to be his flagship company, Fortune Tobacco Corporation, only in 1965. Born in the southern Chinese province of Fujian in 1934, Mr Tan was four years old when his parents came to the Philippines in search of better fortune.

But in a country where business fortunes can be made or lost on government connections, the rapid growth of Mr Tan's corporate empire is also widely seen as a result of his close association with the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

In explaining Mr Tan's phenomenal rise, "the bigger force is political connection but he knows how to strategise which businesses to get into", says Dr Ellen Palanca, an economist specialising on ethnic Chinese businesses in the Philippines.

Mr Tan also came to the country at a time when its economic base was shifting from agriculture towards industry and services, and the traditional and landed Spanish mestizo elite were under pressure from Mr Marcos. "He was also lucky that the traditional oligarchs were the enemies of Marcos," adds Dr Palanca.

Soon after the dictator was overthrown in 1986, the new government of president Corazon Aquino filed a civil case to expropriate Mr Tan's key assets on the ground they were "ill-gotten", and partly owned by Mr Marcos.

The government alleged that special concessions granted by Mr Marcos allowed Mr Tan to become the biggest cigarette maker in the 1970s, enter the brewery business in 1982 which had until then been a monopoly, and rapidly grow a troubled bank acquired in 1977 into the country's third-biggest lender. Mr Tan has rejected those allegations.

Against the odds, not only has Mr Tan successfully warded off the government's attempts to seize control of his companies - all the cases are still tied up in court - he has managed to grow his businesses. He even acquired new ones, including state companies being privatised such as Philippine Airlines andPhilippine National Bank.

For reasons still unclear to outsiders, a serious rift erupted earlier this year with Mariano, one of Mr Tan's seven siblings who are all working in the family business.

In July, Mariano, through his counsel, told government lawyers that he was ready to testify and provide valuable information to bolster the government's two-decade-old cases against the elder Mr Tan and the Marcoses. The quarrel comes at a critical period for Mr Tan, who is preparing for his sons to eventually succeed him. The country is also in the early stages of a presidential election that could bring in a less friendly administration. Mr Tan declined to comment.

                                       Copyright © 2009. All Rights Reserved. Lucio C. Tan Group of Companies