RSA makes WSJ 'power list' anew

Manila, Philippines -  San Miguel Corp. (SMC) president and chief operating officer Ramon S. Ang has again made it to the “power list” of influential publication The Wall Street Journal Asia.

The 57-year-old Ang, who engineered the diversification of Southeast Asia’s largest food, beverage, and packaging conglomerate into power generation, infrastructure, oil refining and distribution, telecoms, mining and airlines, is the only Filipino on the recent WSJ “Power List Asia,” which is composed of top Asian business leaders making headlines in select global and regional media.

It is the third time that Ang has made it to the elite list of newsmakers in regional business.

Ang made local and regional news recently for becoming the single largest individual shareholder in SMC after chairman and chief executive officer Eduardo M. Cojuangco Jr. decided to sell him his remaining 11 percent stake in the conglomerate.

For the past 14 years since Ang joined Cojuangco in San Miguel, the company has been reporting sustained growth and record results. In 2011, it registered all-time high sales of P536 billion, a 118 percent improvement from the previous record of P246 billion in 2010. Its P174.2-billion sales in 2009 was also a record high at the time.

“From the time I requested Ramon to join me in the company, he has continuously dedicated 100-percent of his time and effort in ensuring the growth of the San Miguel group,” Cojuangco said of Ang after the sale.

In 2010, the Wall Street Journal included him in its Power List: Year in Review, along with legendary investor Warren Buffet and Toyota’s Akio Toyoda. He made the list again in 2011 after SMC acquired ExxonMobil’s Malaysian downstream oil businesses.

On the recent list with Ang are Hong Chi, chief executive of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, a multinational investment firm; Li Ning, founder of China’s Li Ning, an athletic goods manufacturer; Yukio Sakamoto, president of Elpida Memory, a leading maker of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) integrated circuits, and Masayoshi Son, chairman of Japan’s Softbank, a telecoms and technology firm.