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THE family
patriarch who built the group of companies which continues
to grow today has long been dead.
But his
legacy of hard work remains the guiding spirit that
continues to inspire his children to dream and persevere
having learned well the business basics as on-the-job
trainees with Goodyear Steel Pipes Corp., which he
established in 1964, being one of the monuments to his
achievements as an entrepreneur.
For John
Tiu Ka Cho, who died in 1987 at the age of 62, was a quiet
builder of companies starting with Union Hardware in 1947;
seldom did his name land in the business pages of
newspapers. If ever his name went out of the private
confines of his businesses, it ended up on the list of
stockholders of certain listed companies, where, in some
instances, he was one of the members of the board of
directors.
Ben, the
oldest of the six children, became actively involved in
the family business when he was 30. That was in 1981. Six
years later, their father died, leaving with him and his
brothers the challenging task of charting the growth of
the companies he had left behind. Ben was a reluctant
patriarch at 36, though he had no other option but to
assume the duties of a father of the family.
Naming the
family’s flagship JTKC was the Tiu children’s way of
honoring and perpetuating the memory of their father.
After all, it was the late patriarch who steered Goodyear
Steel Pipes to become the Philippines’ biggest steel maker
many years ago, although it was not the family’s first
venture. “In 1947 the vision for the JTKC Group of
Companies was born with the establishment of Union
Hardware,” JTKC Equities Inc. said in a corporate profile
To Ben and
his younger brothers Ruben, Jerry, Dexter, Alexander and
John Jr., their only regret is that their father did not
live long enough to witness the expansion and
diversification of their businesses. But the Tiu children
were happy that their father died with a fulfilled wish of
owning a property in Makati. The old man failed to acquire
the prime lot at the corner of Buendia and Makati Avenue,
where Pacific Star now stands, which was first offered to
the family, but which his father did not buy because a
brother’s computation did not show positive results. When
another opportunity came, Ben said they did not dilly
dally and bought the Gilarmi Apartments to please their
old man.
“I told
Ruben not to do any computation anymore,” Ben said. “I
told him to buy it.”
As
investors and majority stockholders of public companies
like their father, the six Tiu brothers stayed in the
background despite having significant exposures in some
listed stocks through JTKC Equities. However, hiding from
the public eye—and scrutiny—is not how the game is played
in corporate Philippines.
This, the
Tius must have learned when they unloaded the family’s
stake in International Exchange Bank. They found
themselves in the public eye when they sold their iBank
shares as investors and the media were curious to know who
were joining the Razons, the majority stockholders of
International Container Terminal Services Inc., in selling
out to Union Bank of the Philippines and who were not.
JTKC
Equities, as the Tius’ investment arm, was the single
biggest and founding stockholder of iBank. It owned
79,453,059 shares, equivalent to 24.931 percent of 318.68
million outstanding shares. Its holdings consisted of
directly owned 78,333,030 shares, or 24.5805 percent, and
1,230,29 shares, which it owned through a subsidiary,
which held 31,526,690 shares, or 1.763 percent, in
IVantage Corp., which, in turn, owned 63,699,920 shares,
or 19.9887 percent.
To the
family, selling their shares, with par value of P1, was a
very profitable way out. It may have lost a bank but, in
the process, it made big money. At Union Bank’s offer of
P42.50 per share, JTKC Equities grossed P3,376,755,007.50.
TKC Steel
and I-Remit Inc. are only two in the JTKC Group whose
shares are publicly traded. If their sister companies are
not listed on the exchange, they, however, are potential
candidates for IPOs such as JTKC Land and the group’s own
savings bank. After all, the Tius are now familiar with
the rules, having learned their lesson when iBank went
public, a few years after its incorporation in the early
1990s. Although 10 years later the Tius lost iBank but
were richer by about P3 billion, Ben still has certain
misgivings about tapping the public for capital through an
IPO.
“I am now
being pressured for income,” he says on investor’s
attitude toward public companies.
TKC Steel
got into the stock market through the backdoor, one of
three ways of going public—the other two being the more
popular and common process called IPO, and listing by
introduction. In going public, it used a listed company,
SQL Wizard Inc., which was incorporated on November 28,
1996, to engage in providing consulting services to Oracle
customers, developing packaged application systems,
selling its own application products, and reselling Oracle
software. SQL, which was listed as a small and medium
enterprise, eventually was renamed TKC Steel and became a
holding company.
TKC Steel
owns Treasure Steel Corp., which operates a billet-making
facility in Iligan City, Lanao del Norte. It also owns
90-percent equity in ZZ Stronghold, a company incorporated
and based in Zhang Zhou, Fujian, China. ZZ, which operates
in a 50-hectare property, manufactures various types of
steel pipes and undertakes the distribution of its
products in China and other export markets. |
