Speaking at First Pacific’s 45th anniversary celebration, the businessman behind PLDT, Meralco and Metro Pacific reflected not just on decades of dealmaking, but on recovery, leadership and what comes next as he approaches his 80th birthday this year.
The remarks offered a rare personal glimpse into the Ateneo and Wharton graduate who helped build First Pacific from a four-person Hong Kong startup into a regional investment group which oversees listed and privately held assets worth over P1 trillion.
“We may own luxury cars, but today, the vehicle that matters most for me is a 16-year-old, thrice-depreciated van—because it is the only one that can carry me, my wheelchair, and my hope for recovery,” said Pangilinan, who typically travels in a fleet of white luxury SUVs and cars.
“The luxury cars may remain in the garage for now, but real wealth is with us here in this theater: family, friends, faith, and the determination to stand and walk again,” he added.
A painful detour
Pangilinan recently returned to Manila after knee surgery in Singapore.
“As to my knees, well, every small step has become a major achievement. Suddenly, standing up feels like winning a badminton championship. Walking across the room deserves applause,” Pangilinan said.
“And finding a comfortable sleeping position takes more engineering than designing a power plant,” he added.
Pangilinan mixed humor with reflections on recovery.
“And you know what? This experience reminds us that no matter how successful we become, our knees remain completely unimpressed,” Pangilinan said.
‘God does not write in straight lines’
Pangilinan then turned to First Pacific’s journey from a modest Hong Kong office to a regional investment group.
Over the years, First Pacific owned businesses ranging from banks and telecommunications ventures to Thailand’s Berli Jucker, New York retailer Dean & DeLuca, and consumer brands such as Eskinol, Wilkins and Tanduay.
Today, the group’s investments touch the daily lives of millions of Filipinos through power, water, roads, telecommunications and healthcare.
“God, after all, does not write in straight lines,” Pangilinan said.
“What accumulated over 45 years of being completely honest with ourselves and our governance was a group that found itself woven into the fabric of daily Filipino life,” he added.
Loyalty and legacy
Yet Pangilinan said the company’s greatest strength has always been its people.
He congratulated 25 service awardees whose combined tenure reached 653 years, noting that their average service of 26 years represented “the scale of loyalty of our people to First Pacific.”
“Forty-five years ago, on a bright Monday morning in the Hong Kong summer, Bob Meyer and I stepped onto our very first office—rented furniture included—to meet our entire staff of four people,” Pangilinan said.
The office occupied just 50 square meters in Hong Kong’s Central district.
Freedom to take risks
Looking back, Pangilinan had a message for his younger self.
“If I could go back—and stand again in that small room and speak to my 35-year-old self—I would tell myself: Look around. There is something sacred about small beginnings that you cannot feel until they are behind you,” Pangilinan said.
“There was freedom in being young. We risked freely. We didn’t have much in experience and money, but we made up for it in sheer energy, in daring, in taking risks, and almost being promiscuous with it,” he added.
A future still unwritten
Pangilinan closed with a subject rarely discussed in boardrooms: the value of uncertainty.
Drawing inspiration from the film Conclave, he argued that uncertainty should not always be viewed as something to eliminate.
“We all know business abhors uncertainty and the unknown,” Pangilinan said.
“But if all things were certain in our world, there would be no need for projections or forecasts,” he said.
“There would be no need for CFOs or even CEOs because there would be nothing for them to do when all forecasts become predictable,” he added.
The philosophy echoed themes running throughout the speech.
“That I doubt freely, and even proudly, has made me a better person and a better leader,” Pangilinan said.
Pangilinan said he hopes that tradition endures beyond his generation.
“I hope this tradition of leadership continues on for First Pacific,” he said.
“I cannot wait to get back to my previous healthy life, and continue working with all of you, and playing badminton,” he added.
—Edited by Miguel R. Camus
