The other Chua

Recently the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) announced the selection of Edgar “Ed” Chua, country chair of Shell Companies in the Philippines as “MAP Management Man of the Year.” A chemical engineering graduate of De La Salle University and a “senior management course at INSEAD in France,” Ed was cited for “exemplary leadership in steering the Shell Companies in the Philippines to a level of sustainable growth and profitability….”

Washington Sycip was the first MAP awardee in 1967. In 2012, Aurelio Montinola of the Bank of the PhilippineIslands won the award.

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Last week, my good friend and classmate, Tony

Cabangon-Chua, received the Management Man of the Year Award for 2013 from the Philippine Council of Management. Tony graduated from high school at the Philippine College of Commerce and Business Administration, now the University of the East (UE), and went on to earn a commerce degree at UE. He also attended the Guzman Institute of Technology and Bohol

Colleges, where he took up typing and stenography. He even enrolled at the Brazilian Dancing School to learn the tango, which was the popular thing at that time.

There is more about Tony that people don’t know and this may help us understand and appreciate his achievements and the height he has attained in a business world dominated by graduates of Harvard Business School, Wharton and other similar institutions in the western world.

Tony is the second of three children (a brother and sister both died in infancy) of Dominga Lim-Cabangon and Tomas Chua, who was a middle class entrepreneur in the lumber business. His parents never married, and so as people would say, Tony was a bastard, born “outside the kulambo.” His mother had a great devotion to St. Anthony de Padua and he was baptized with the name Antonio.

Tony started life under comfortable circumstances, but in 1944, during the Japanese occupation, he lost his father, who was reportedly executed for suspected guerrilla activities. He didn’t know his father since mother and son preferred living in Malate while he worked in Apalit, Pampanga. Perhaps there was another family involved.

During the Battle for the Liberation of Manila, mother and son lost everything, and only the perseverance and fortitude of his mother kept them alive. She became a washerwoman for GI troops at Camp Murphy, while he would queue up at relief centers for canned goods that were being handed out by US forces. He learned to shine GI shoes. Today he still keeps his shoe shine box, a vestige of the past that remains part of his memories.

Two experiences in his life stand out, never to be forgotten.

One day, Tony came home from shining shoes. Nobody was home. He was hungry and he saw a slice of fried  bangus  that he thought was left for him by his mother. It turned out that it was for another couple with whom they shared a small room. The incident embarrassed his mother as they were practically accused of stealing food. It humiliated his mother and she gave him “the worst beating in his life.”

Tony says the incident was traumatic for him. “From that moment on, he was determined to become a success in the world as the world understands success:  the making of so much money that there could never be the danger of going hungry again.” For Tony, the hungry years were made even more bitter by the memories of his early childhood when he and his mother lived in comparative comfort. He says,

“Being poor is harder to bear if you had it easy before.”

The other story had to do with wooden clogs.

Enrolled in primary school when schools opened in June 1945, Tony had found himself among classmates shod in shoes, slippers or, at least, wooden clogs. The road leading to the school was a dirt road, gritty with gravel and stone. Tony had traveled that dirt road barefoot all summer without caring if his soles were prickled. But now he was in school with classmates who were all wearing some kind of footwear: shoes, slippers, or at least  bakya. Only he was barefoot. Tony went home to demand that his mother buy him at least a pair of wooden clogs.

“I was crying. I told her my feet hurt from walking barefoot on gravel. It was two kilometers from our house to the school and I had to walk the distance every school day…. I explained I was not asking her to buy me leather shoes. All I wanted was a pair of plain wooden clogs, which did not cost more than thirty centavos.

“Only thirty centavos but to Tony’s surprise when he asked her to buy him a pair of  bakya, his mother broke down and wept. He flinched to see her burst into tears. Apparently they were in such straits in those days that they couldn’t afford even thirty centavos for footwear.

“Tony repented having complained about the ravaging of his feet as he realized what anguish his mother was suffering because he needed footwear and she could not afford to buy him even clogs.” (“Antonio Cabangon Chua: A Saga of Success,” Nick Joaquin, 1986.)

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Of all his charity works, none is closer to his heart than the Dominga Lim Cabangon Scholarship Foundation. From the barrios where he grew up in Mandaluyong, children are selected as scholars of the foundation. They choose the schools and all expenses—school fees, books, and uniforms—are shouldered by the foundation.

Tony has achieved all his childhood dreams and ambitions, but the challenge to do even better continues. Today his empire covers real estate, insurance, publishing, vehicle distribution, communications and a host of related industries and services.

In his acceptance speech on receiving the Management Man of the Year Award, he shares some of the principles that he has learned from more than 50 years of experience in business management.

• The best fertilizer in any business undertaking is the footprint[s] of its owner. When your people see you in the workplace, they are inspired and are always alert to do their best. (Perhaps this is what Tony meant when he said that in doing business, the best degree is an MBWA or “management by walking around.”)

• Honesty will always be the best policy and never goes out of style. People who are honest, capable and hardworking are the best assets of an organization.

• A wise man once said: “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. ”

• We can always ask God’s blessing and help, but here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own. Nasa Diyos ang awa, nasa tao ang gawa.