EDITORIAL - Ayala: 180 years of success

While the nation competes for more job-generating investments, it can celebrate the continuing success of a homegrown enterprise. Ayala marks its 180th anniversary this year as one of the nation’s largest conglomerates, providing employment to thousands and contributing significantly to national development.

The Ayala success story started in 1834 with the establishment of Las Islas Filipinas. Landowning entrepreneur Domingo Roxas and the young Antonio de Ayala built a distillery using cane sugar and began competing overseas. Exporting products to Europe, they found a bestseller in Ginebra San Miguel. Antonio de Ayala was later introduced to banking, when a Spanish royal decree set up El Banco Español-Filipino de Isabella II and named him director representing the Manila business community. The bank – Southeast Asia’s first private commercial bank, which issued the first Philippine paper currency – would later become the Bank of the Philippine Islands.

A multitalented board member of Banco Español, de Ayala’s son-in-law Jacobo Zobel, introduced the first streetcar system in the city of Manila where he served as mayor when he was just 30 years old. At the turn of the 20th century, the tramcar service was sold to an American company, which renamed it the Manila Electric Railway and Light Co. or Meralco.

In 1851, Roxas’ son Jose Bonifacio reportedly pushed for the purchase of land in San Pedro de Makati up to the Pasig riverbank. The property, deemed of little value and which had changed ownership several times, was bought by the company for P52,800. In 1914 when the family’s assets were appointed, the property went to the cousins Jacobo, Alfonso and Mercedes Zobel de Ayala.

How the cousins grew this asset is evident today in the country’s first modern Central Business District. From the vision for real estate development set by Mercedes’ husband, Col. Joseph McMicking, Ayala evolved from a purely family business into a more corporate organization. The company began tapping external talent, incorporating in 1968 and going public in 1976.

McMicking and his successors – Jacobo’s son Enrique Zobel and Alfonso’s son Jaime Zobel – steered Ayala to greater success. Today Jaime’s sons Jaime Augusto and Fernando Zobel de Ayala carry the torch of leadership in the company’s continued expansion and diversification, into BPO, power and transport infrastructure, electronics manufacturing, telecommunications through Globe and water distribution through Manila Water.

With Jaime Zobel de Ayala as chairman emeritus, the Ayala brand has come to be associated with best practices, integrity, product and service quality, and corporate responsibility. BPI is associated with prudence and financial strength, making it a partner of choice of major international corporations and a preferred bank of micro-entrepreneurs and overseas Filipino workers. Ayala’s story is a source of national pride, and the nation joins the conglomerate in celebrating its 180th year.