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JACINTO Uy
believes he’s luckier than most family-centric
businessmen: all his children chose to work for him.
“The
greatest thing about it is enjoying working under him,”
Uy’s son Michael, the eldest of three children helping to
steer Moldex Group of Companies in a high oil price
environment and ride a booming real-estate sector.
Since the
elder Uy helped form Moldex with P55,000 paid up capital
in 1967, the plastic-pipe manufacturer now has property
development and insurance among its businesses.
“Luck is
an important factor of success,” the Uy patriarch said at
the 14th floor of the company condominium building.
The
37-story Golden Empire, which Moldex claims as the tallest
residential structure in the country, is a testament to
that luck.
The Golden
Empire is one of two major vertical property projects that
Moldex ventured into two years before a real-estate bubble
burst in 1997.
While
other realtors cite hollow buildings and vacant units
after the Asian financial crisis hit the country that
time, the The Golden Empire stayed commanding a
P16-million per unit price tag.
And that’s
the cheapest.
“Many are
hardworking and they’re good at what they do as doctors,
managers; but they work for stockholders who have more
money than them,” Uy said.
These bits
of wisdom harkening to a Confucianism philosophy has been
the Moldex Group chair’s guide to arrive at what he calls
his “destiny as a businessman.”
These are
also what his eldest son awaits ever since his father
brought him to board meetings.
“I
remember the time when I was still fresh from college and
I would sit in during my father’s meetings with the
company executives, which I would look forward to with
enthusiasm,” the son said.
He said it
was like “listening to Confuscian business ethics” every
time his “father’s thought processes spill over the
discussions.”
“What
seemed to be a very logical decision of the group, my
father often came out with a better solution and better
analysis of the entire situation,” he added.
The elder
Uy, for example, cited one Filipino-Chinese businessman
who he rightly said would lose out in a direct competition
with a shopping mall magnate.
“Don’t
fight a giant nor challenge it in its path because you’ll
get crushed; because you’re still small and weak,” the
73-year-old businessman said. “Take another path.”
Moldex can
testify to that shrewd business sense.
In the
late 1960s, when manufacturers were still few, Uy said he
withdrew his shares from a company making finished
products from aluminum waste and went into reprocessing of
plastic materials into pellets.
After
getting a large pharmaceutical company as a client, Moldex
ventured into making PVC film.
As more
local drug makers tapped Moldex’s product, the company
became the major supplier of rigid uPVC film in the
pharmaceutical industry.
Zero
DURING
lunch every Friday, as far as Michael Uy remembers, is how
his father imparts the wisdom acquired in running Moldex
for four decades.
“It’s a
family affair that all we talk about is business,” the
Moldex Group managing director said.
His dad
admitted influencing his three children to have that
business sense. He sadly he would be sadly surprised if
one of his children took up say, painting, or went abroad
to pursue things other than the family business.
“It’s
their destiny to be in business as I believe it’s my
fate,” Uy said.
His son,
however, said that it was her sister Marilyn Uy Enriquez,
who became involved earlier than him and brother Richard.
Nonetheless, he asserts he took up industrial management
engineering because he wanted to pursue that academic
degree. “My father allowed us to enjoy our college life
but it was really my sister who helped in the accounting
and financial management even while still pursuing a
degree,” he said.
It was
only after he graduated from De La Salle University that
his father entrusted him with a responsibility in Moldex.
The
younger Uy, who holds 11 percent or 44 million shares in
Moldex, was given time to familiarize himself with the
company, which now has seven subsidiaries.
“Then they
were given positions of trust,” their father said.
According
to SEC documents, daughter Marilyn is treasurer, while
youngest Richard is assistant secretary for the board.
Michael Uy
currently oversees the day-to-day operations of the Group.
For any
major decisions, especially investments, he said he still
and always consults his father. “It’s because he’s my
father and he’s the chairman that I do so,” he explained.
But the
father said he expects his children to eventually succeed
him in steering Moldex. “That is being practical as well
as, again, our destiny” as a family, Uy said.
Of course,
he added, a family business could only survive with the
help of outsiders.
“Management has to be professionalized. The board, for
example, shouldn’t only have family members but also those
who are good at what they do,” the father conceded.
He cited,
for example, that his stake in Moldex was a sixth of the
firm’s total paid up capital that time. He said he knew
then he couldn’t go on such venture alone so he took his
life savings and threw it into the pool that formed Moldex
Products Inc.
“He has
been and still is a fighter,” Michael Uy said after his
dad has left the room.
He built
the company from the ground up and has faced many crises
such as the oil crisis in the 1970s, the Asian financial
crisis, and now the inflation and oil-price crisis, he
added.
“He never
gave up,” beamed the son.
Integrity
THE Moldex
chairman was taken aback one day when a plumber inside
Moldex’s Quezon City office didn’t return his chirpy
greeting. Stuttering, the plumber explained hthat is
cataract has impaired his vision.
“My father
without hesitation sent that plumber to his personal
doctor to be treated. He wasn’t even on the company
payroll,” Uy’s son recalled, adding that his father has
done such acts of kindness so many times.
“Yet he
never talks about them,” he said, noting he would only
learn about it later and from other employees.
The
father’s “soft heart for people who are striving in life”
may have come from his beginnings while working in
Manila
for a P4-minimum daily wage. He said his family is not
that rich and relied on the earnings of a retail store
that his father managed in
Cabanatuan,
Nueva Ecija.
Having
started from scratch as a businessman, however, Uy said he
never curried favor from politicians or those in power.
“I always
believed money should be earned with a conscience because
that gives me peace of mind,” he said.
It also
makes him sleep soundly at night, he added.
For him, a
sure road to failure is for businessmen to believe they’re
the sole purveyor of the company’s success.
“If you
begin to think you are the sole fountain of intelligence
and has the Midas touch, then I can count the days when
you’ll fall,” he said. “Arrogance is a sign of a weak
character.”
Indeed,
despite having in his disposal a substantial wealth—Moldex
Land Inc. alone for instance posted a P50-million net
income in 2006—Uy doesn’t brim with self-importance.
“I began
with nothing. But I see myself today having that
satisfaction that I’m on track with my destiny,” he
reiterated.
For his
son, having Uy as a father is a fate he’s happy to have.
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