The Commuter

In his air-conditioned headquarters next to Manila's presidential palace, a portly aristocrat in an immaculate white suit caught up with the business at hand. With imperious dispatch, Don Andres Soriano, 64, decided on the gift boxes that his companies will use next Christmas, studied the experimental strains of barley that he hopes to grow in the Mindanao highlands, and okayed production schedules for a new instant-coffee plant near Manila. That done, he got set to fly to New York to complete negotiations with International Paper Co. for construction of a jointly owned wood pulp and paper mill--the first in the Philippines.

A tireless concern for detail, plus a flair for profitable experimentation, has made tough, touchy Andres Soriano one of the Philippines' top-ranking tycoons, with an estimated personal fortune of $80 million.

All told, Soriano controls or has a major interest in 14 companies ranging from Philippine radio and TV stations to breweries in Hong Kong and Spain and a fishing business in Borneo. Last year, the major firms controlled by his A. Soriano & Co. netted $6,400,000 on sales of $74.8 million. Since World War II, his enterprises have averaged a breathtaking 35% annual return on invested capital.

Altering the Pattern. In Soriano's lifetime, the Philippines have begun the transition from a feudal agricultural society to a modern industrialized economy, and Soriano has been a leader in the process.

Born in Manila the year that the U.S. took over the islands, he came of a sugar-rich Spanish colonial family and at 21 was installed as acting manager of a family enterprise--the San Miguel brewery.

But the traditional Philippine pattern of easy enjoyment of inherited wealth was not for Soriano. From the brewery, he expanded into the soft-drink business, then set up a plant to make bottles for his beverages and opened a silica mine to provide the raw materials for the glass.

Soriano likes to say that business "must help the country," and he has played a major role in developing such Philippine resources as gold, iron, copper and lumber, as well as in the development of local industry to capitalize on those resources.

With a farsightedness rare among Philippine capitalists, he has shared some of the fruits of his prosperity with his 16,000 employees. As early as 1918, he set up a pension plan that paid retired employees 25% of their salary, and followed it with guaranteed sick leaves and medical benefits. "Don Andres," says a fellow Manila businessman, "has a modern mind."

The Cost of Anger. Soriano's modernity has its limits. Many of his employee benefits seem at least partly designed to keep his workers out of unions--which are anathema to Soriano. And his aristocratic hauteur has provoked resentments that are slow to die. A Spanish citizen by birth, Soriano supported the Franco regime in the 1930s, and when he became a Philippine citizen in 1941 was denounced by some Filipinos as a Fascist advance man. The charge cut so deeply that in 1945 Soriano angrily switched to U.S. citizenship--to which he was entitled because of his World War II service as a colonel on General MacArthur's staff.

His U.S. citizenship haunted Soriano last year during a bitter battle with rival Manila Capitalist Eugenio Lopez over the management of Philippine Air Lines, which Soriano organized in 1941. Attacked as a foreigner guilty of monopolistic profiteering, Soriano lost his temper during a Senate hearing on his management of P.A.L. and incautiously snapped out: "A thief thinks everyone else is a thief." The Senate committee issued a report imply ing that some of Soriano's other enter prises had been overcharging P.A.L. for their services -- whereupon Soriano gave up operating the airline. But his with drawal has not kept him out of the air.

Keeping a sharp eye on all his scattered enterprises, Soriano commutes between the Philippines. Hong Kong, the U.S. and Spain. Says Son Jose. 37: "He has a resi dence in Manila, a domicile in New York -- and he lives in an airplane."

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