IT has been an extraordinary seven days for two publicly listed Philippine corporations. And that is a gross understatement.
The Resorts World Manila complex was the venue for a horrible deadly attack by a person whose conduct cannot be called anything less than deranged. Then the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) apparently had its depositors accounting system also acting deranged.
How does a man carrying a semiautomatic firearm get past a security checkpoint? How does a bank accounting system show a negative balance in a savings account without the roof of the bank’s headquarters exploding? To call these unexpected ‘black swan’ events is an insult to the real black swans in the wetlands of Australia.
The fact that there were two highly unusual corporate occurrences in a brief span of time got us to thinking about what some people refer to as the power of “three”.
The number “3” has an interesting history. Some research indicates that early people counted “One, two, three” and anything over three—days, ducks, or drums—was simply “many” in normal conversation. There are three primary colors—red, yellow and blue. In the Hindu, Buddhist, Tao and Christian religion/philosophy, the idea of three deities or a concept of trinity is prominent. A three-legged table will always rest steadily on a flat floor.
Many numbers are associated with good and bad luck. For many Chinese, “8” is good; “4” is not. The next time you visit a high-rise hotel, check the elevators buttons. You may see 11, 12, 14, 15 as there is a supposed psychological condition—triskaidekaphobia—fear of the number “13”.
The reason we bring up this idea of 3 is that there is a belief in the filmmaking circles of Hollywood that celebrity deaths occur in threes. While there is obviously no scientific evidence to back that up, there have been some remarkable coincidences. In 1959, rock stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died but they were killed in a single plane crash. But then again, in 2009, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Johnny Carson’s sidekick Ed McMahon all passed on within five days. Last year David Bowie, Alan Rickman and singer Céline Dion’s husband René Angélil died in the same week.
The US city of Orlando, Florida experienced the shooting death of singer/songwriter Christina Grimmie, the mass murder of 49 people in a nightclub frequented by the gay community and a 2-year-old boy killed by an alligator at Walt Disney World all within four days.
When a group of people wants to lift something heavy together, some one usually says “One, two, three”. And we say, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”. That’s three attempts; not four.
The Philippine stock market is also at “try, try again” having tried but failed to break the 8,000 level first back in 2015 and also in 2016. While we have our fingers crossed—sure, we are a little superstitious, too—that the corporate disasters will end at two, we are hoping that “the third time’s a charm” for the Philippine Stock Exchange.