EastWest stepping up its game

Gotianun-owned EastWest Bank is stepping up its game and increasing its media presence following a formal press luncheon Tuesday with various business media representatives to meet and interview the bank’s  chief executive officer Jerry Ngo (his first interview since he took over as CEO at the start of this year) and third generation steward of the Filinvest conglomerate and EastWest  executive director Isabelle Gotianun-Yap, who was likewise meeting the press for the first time as she and Jerry take on more high-profile roles.

Isabelle specifically allotted time last Tuesday to meet with business reporters before flying off to Dubai to attend an international forum. She stressed the conglomerate’s move toward ensuring a meritocracy-based and professional leadership. She also clarified that members of the Gotianun family are not necessarily trained just to assume future roles in the conglomerate, but to be “contributing members of society...and so, we want people to be independent and qualified to have their own jobs...to be independent people... and whether or not that is in the business, it is not a rule that people have to be in the business.”

Isabelle herself has earned her way to a leadership role in the Gotianun conglomerate after getting her undergraduate degrees from the Ateneo and Singapore Management University, followed by an MBA at the Harvard Business School.

After her studies, Isabelle still gained business management experience as a trainee with Singapore Telecom and as a consultant at McKinsey and Co.

Unfortunately for the young bachelors out there, Isabelle is already taken and has two young boys (aged four and one) who, she admits, are quite a handful. However, her love of Muay Thai or Thai boxing, a full contact martial art that uses the fists, elbows, knees and feet to strike an opponent, gives her the energy to keep up with her two very energetic sons and also get rid of stress and unwanted excess fat after two pregnancies.

She practices Muay Thai with her husband to basically keep fit, along with Pilates exercises. She leaves it up to fate if she and her Dutch husband will still aim for a little girl to balance out the excess energy of her two boys.

Her family, she reveals, enjoys the beach, especially in family-owned Crimson Mactan, and also vacations in her husband’s family farm in the Netherlands. They spend their time in Manila between BGC, where they live, and in Alabang where they also spend time at the Palms Country Club by Filinvest.

Aside from Muay Thai, Isabelle also likes to play golf. She declines to reveal her handicap (the number that represents golfing ability), explaining that she and her mom, who she plays with at times at the exclusive Manila Golf Club, refuse to count their strokes so as not to stress themselves out while they talk about business.

From medicine to banking

For Jerry Ngo, the path to banking was actually an accidental detour away from the medical training that started in Cebu. He had wanted to be a doctor and thus enrolled in a medical school and completed training as a medical technologist in preparation for employment overseas.

However, fate intervened as Citibank, which was then expanding to Cebu, was looking for staff in the province. Jerry admits that the salary offered enticed him to shift to banking, which led to his seven-year career as a Citibanker and where he got the opportunity to get formal training in Singapore and Korea as a banker, and eventually got head-hunted by Standard Chartered where he spent another 10 years.

His initial entry with the Gotianun conglomerate was through Filinvest Development Corp. where he worked on mergers and acquisitions before eventually moving to EastWest where he worked with former EastWest president and CEO Antonio Moncupa before assuming the CEO post on Jan.1 this year. The president of the bank, Jacqueline Fernandez, assumed the post on July 1, 2022.

In contrast to Isabelle, Jerry prefers marathon running which he nows limit to just 10 kilometers, admitting that the sport is more of a “mind over matter” exercise for him.

The banking sector, according to Jerry, is seeing a confluence of technology that is slowing erasing the need for separate digital banks or payments systems and is instead moving toward integrating all systems.

This means, Jerry points out, that the focus should not be on bringing in more players and instead ensuring a level playing field. Likewise, it should not be around payments systems as the payment rails are already there. Instead, what is needed is access to credit.

At the same time, Jerry also sees the need for further education of the public with regard to payments systems, mostly through e-wallets but which unfortunately are still subject to fees charged by the payments systems providers, and the need instead to adopt an open banking system, which is already allowed by law through the InstaPay system, but which is not fully grasped or understood by the general banking population due to the lack of adequate education.

He pointed out that the Philippines is uniquely different in that the e-wallet system is more prevalent instead of the InstaPay system.

Uniqlo’s continuing popularity

Fast Retailing Co. Ltd., the Japanese multinational retail holding company that owns Uniqlo, along with several other brands, including J Brand, Comptoir des Cotonniers, GU, Princesse Tam-Tam, and Theory, has reported a record-high business performance for its 2023 fiscal year.

The strong results were boosted by the Uniqlo International business segment, which saw its revenue grow to more than half of total group revenue for the first time, while operating profit expanded to approximately 60 percent of the consolidated total.

Uniqlo operations in Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe continued to expand their customer base, while Uniqlo in the Greater China region also entered a renewed growth phase in the second half. The solid growth track for Uniqlo International and the GU business segment further demonstrated the success of the group’s program to diversify its revenue streams.

The group’s consolidated revenue in the year to Aug. 31, 2023, rose to ¥2.7665 trillion, a 20.2 percent increase from the prior year, while operating profit rose by a robust 28.2 percent to ¥381 billion.

Fast Retailing, for its 2024 fiscal year, expects higher revenue and operating profit, with overall revenue projected to grow by 10.2 percent. The Japanese retail group announced that it is adopting an aggressive stance by accelerating growth on a global scale while simultaneously going back to basics and focusing on thoroughly implementing its business principles and strengthening its management platforms.

It also intends to scale up its efforts to address the following five priority issues that include pursuing global optimum product development and enhance branding globally, strengthen the opening of high-quality stores, implement management that focuses on SKU units and the needs of individual stores, strengthen group brands, and lastly, transform management to operate from a global perspective.

In terms of store numbers, Uniqlo’s store network will total 3,660 stores by the end of August 2024, comprising 800 Japan stores (including franchised stores), 1,744 international stores, 480 GU stores, and 636 Global Brands stores.