P1M a month for 20-year-old

This Ateneo de Manila University record has not been broken for the past 10 years – the P1 million a month salary for a fresh graduate.

That was the offer which Jerome Uy, a 1998 management honors graduate, received and accepted from management consultancy firm Bain & Co.

Since then, Mr. Uy has completed his MBA – Harvard University, naturally – and has put up a business with wife and fellow Harvard alumni Meredith Ngo.

Their business? The master Philippine franchise of Singaporean healthy lifestyle chain Fuzion Smoothie Café (think Starbucks with smoothies instead of coffee and lots more food).

Opened early this year, the business currently has two outlets and will finish this year with 10, including the flagship store at the former food court of Greenbelt 3 which will be opened by July this year.

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So far, so good for Interbev vice-president Hubert Tan, who claims that early market response to Virgin-branded soft drinks has been better than target.

Mr. Tan, the son of Harry and the nephew of Lucio, is in charge of the local show for the English product, whose bottled line is better known as "Pammy" (since its contour was inspired by Hollywood starlet Pamela Anderson).

Virgin is, of course, looking to grab market share from dominant market leader, Coca-Cola, which is bottled in the Philippines by San Miguel Corp. (and the major competitor of Interbev’s mother company, Asian Brewery).

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Gradually, Henry Sy is repositioning upwards his chain of SM department store and the SM malls that host them. Or maybe, his children led by Teresita Sy-Coson are.

As everybody knows, the prices of goods in the department stores are standard nationwide, which means that, outside Metro Manila, where the purchasing power is lower, SM is also patronized by the A-B market.

Consider, the department stores’ongoing institutional campaign that features former beauty queen Charlene Gonzalez instead of the usual ongoing-sale ads. And then, there are the renovations – first, in Makati, which has transformed that ugly boxy mall into something prettier; and now, in Megamall – the result, some say, of Mr. Sy seeking feng shui advice to keep sales up even during hard time.

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Alfonso Yuchengco may be Western in many ways – and that includes his blunt speech – but, in one aspect, he is not.

For Al Yuchengco, his good name is priceless. And at this stage in his life where he has been spending more time with the Alfonso Yuchengco Foundation, which has prioritized education (in terms of sending children to school and of honoring those whom children can emulate), his friends are betting that he will do right by the planholders of the insolvent pre-need company, Pacific Plans, Inc. that he has established.