MANILA – JG Summit Holdings, Inc. founder and chair emeritus John Gokongwei, Jr. is the Management Association of the Philippines’ (MAP) Management Man of the Year.
This was announced at MAP’s general membership meeting on Tuesday, where the members also paid tribute to the first MAP Management Man of the Year in 1967, the late SGV & Co. co-founder Washington Sycip.
According to MAP, the award is given to “individuals in the business community or government for attaining unquestioned distinction in the practice of management, and for contributing to the country’s progress.”
Among the criteria that led to MAP’s prestigious recognition of Gokongwei are “integrity, leadership, and maangement qualities; contribution to nation-building and values-formation; (and) effective stewardship within the confines of the highest standard of business and management practice.”
MAP also listed the following reasons Gokongwei was named MAP Management Man of the Year:
1. For his business acumen and management qualities, which steered the Gokongwei Group into remarkable growth, through his foresight and exceptional ability to launch new ventures and transform existing ones to better adapt to challenging times and an unpredictable future;
2. For his leadership role in the substantial contributions of the Gokongwei Group to national development, job creation, and income generation through its huge investments in food manufacturing, real estate, air transportation, banking, petrochemicals, shopping malls, livestock farming, publications, power generation, power distribution, and telecommunications;
3. For strengthening the identity of companies under the Gokongwei Group as socially responsible corporate citizens through the Gokongwei Brothers Foundation’s developmental and scholarship programs on science, technology, engineering, and math education;
4. For being an entrepreneur par excellence and an exemplar of Filipino talent in management excellence for nation-building; and
5. For his contributions to shaping national values and inspiring others by his outstanding achievements attained from humble beginnings through hard work, perseverance, frugality, and discpline.
Gokongwei was second in this year’s Forbes Philippines’ 50 Richest List, with his wealth amounting to US$5.5 billion.
Other MAP Management Man of the Year awardees include Manuel V. Pangilinan (2005), Henry Sy, Sr. (1999), Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (2006), Edgar Chua (2013), and Albert del Rosario (2014).
Awarding ceremonies will be held next month.
