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IT’S no
secret what Banco de Oro Universal Bank intends to do to
become the country’s largest bank, if not this year,
then in the next year or so. It’s the same strategy
that Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. used in the late
1980s to outpace then number one (and now number three)
Bank of the Philippine Islands. What Metrobank did then
was to aggressively get clients, offering better market
rates and more personal services than BPI.
As everybody knows, the core market of
both Metrobank and BDO is the so-called Chinese market.
These days, this market can be broken into two subniches.
One is the “first-generation” Chinese,
which covers local patriarchs and newcomers from China
and Taiwan. This subniche still does business the old
way. Their word is good enough (read: no memorandum of
agreements or security bond) to ensure repayment; to
suggest otherwise would be considered an insult.
The
other is the “second-generation” Chinese or those who’ve
studied in local Chinese schools like Xavier High School
and then move on to either De La Salle University,
Ateneo de Manila University, or some American university
or other. Now, bankers privately admit this subniche can
cause them some sleepness nights.
Right now, Metrobank under president
Arthur Ty is walking a thin line between pleasing its
core client base and developing new markets with a more
professional (read: think BPI) way of doing things.
Towards this end, Ty has been recruiting more
US-educated middle managers into the bank.
BDO under president Nestor Tan does not
seem to have this ambivalence and this has translated in
improved branch performance.
HEALTH
notes 1: There’s a new (read: in the Philippines but not
in Europe) medical specialization called pedia-tric
gynecology. Basically, these are doctors who specialize
in teenage pregnancies by looking after not only the
physical but also the psychological requirements of
their patients.
Right
now, there’s only one hospital (read: it’s located in
Agham Road, Quezon City) that offers this
specialization.
HEALTH
notes 2: Aside from exposure to radiation like working
near a nuclear plant, endocrinologists now believe that
people who live near active volcanoes like Mayon or Taal
may be more susceptible to thyroid cancer.
Interestingly, more women contract
thyroid cancer than men but their survival rate is
higher than that of men.
THERE’S
a 2007-published book called Asian Godfathers written
by Joe Studwell, which discusses how tycoons in the five
original Asean countries plus Hong Kong use politics to
flourish. The book cover includes two Filipinos, Lucio
Tan and Jaime Zobel de Ayala.
Interestingly, the book notes down 14
Filipinos from the Aboitiz family to the Zobel family.
Some such as Roberto Cuenca, Herminio Disini and the
Palanca family are no longer players; others such as
Dewey Dee almost brought the collapse of the Philippine
financial system, while Tan Yu needed a Taiwanese
government bailout.
While not entirely accurate as far as
the parts on the Philippine were concerned, (read: the
author relied a lot on secondary sources such as books
and newspaper stories), it’s a good read at P995. |
