Buhay Petiks

Some affluent Filipino families are quite familiar with fundamental asset protection strategies. They also used them for wealth enhancement and redeployment of investments. The elite families used the dependable corporate form as a way of providing limited liability and flexibility in the transfer of stock ownership. John Sidel, a scholar from Cornell University and a contributor to the book An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines (1994), wrote that the role of the Filipino family as the “primary unit of capital accumulation and corporate control” and the successful concentration and retention of proprietary wealth in family hands help to explain the longevity of the most prominent “dynasties” in contemporary Philippine society. Sidel observed that in some cases (as in the Lopez family), the conversion of landed properties into corporate vehicles has facilitated continued familial solidity over the generations. In other families, such as the Tuasons, the diffusion and dilution of family wealth through inheritance, intermarriage, and investment diversification has speeded up the dissolution of the “dynasty.” In any case, the alternative trajectories are clear: either an increase in familial power or dynastic self-liquidation.