THE largest telecommunications company in the Philippines is willing to shell out at least P10 billion to build a campus-like headquarters south of Metro Manila if this would mean improved collaboration and increased efficiency.
The plan, according to PLDT Inc. Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan, is for the group to develop a huge area—pegged at between 10 hectares and 15 hectares—somewhere in Alabang for the consolidation of the group’s operations in one spot.
“The basic decision is to move out of Makati to the south,” he said. “The total cost would really depend on the cost of the property, but the cost of the buildings might be around P10 billion.”
Inspired by a recent visit to Silicon Valley in the US, Pangilinan surmised that having all of the company’s operations in one spot would increase efficiency and improve collaboration. Found in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley is a community of low-rise to medium-rise buildings that hold offices in a vast expanse of land, forming a community in itself.
As for its current headquarters, the Ramon Cojuangco Building on Makati Avenue, the company plans to redevelop the structure, along with the Makati General Office Building behind it. The company has yet to decide whether to redevelop or sell out right the Smart Tower on Ayala Avenue.
Aside from these offices, the company’s financial services arm, Voyager Innovations Inc., is leasing a space in Ortigas.
Pangilinan said that, with all the offices in a single place, employees will be able to “communicate better, coordinate better, collaborate better because this new digital age needs an open environment.” In the third quarter of 2013, the local telco said it was keen on acquiring the then newly built Alphaland Tower in Makati for the possible consolidation of the operations of the PLDT Group, which includes wireless subsidiaries Smart Communications Inc. and Digitel Mobile Philippines Inc.
But negotiations between PLDT and the group of former trade minister Roberto V. Ongpin, who heads Alphaland Corp., bogged down toward the end of that quarter.