It is said that when Henry Sy Sr. left his home in Xiamen, China to travel to the Philippines and help his father tend a sari-sari store in Echague, Manila, his mother, Tan O Sia, not wanting her young son to feel homesick, told him to never look back.

Sy must have heeded her mother’s advice, helping him to overcome whatever homesickness he might have felt when he arrived in his new home, a penniless 12-year-old boy with nothing but the shirt on his back and 10 centavos in his pocket.

That was half of the 20 centavos, it was said, he and a fellow passenger he befriended found on the vessel bound for Manila and which the latter had called their “lucky money.”

“Lucky,” indeed, is a description apropos for the boy whose folks were named Sy Chi Sieng, which, in Chinese, means “to achieve success ultimately.”

Luck, Sy had in abundance. But more than just luck, the good fortune of this man, who years later would become the undisputed Philippine retail and supermall king, was brought about by a combination of sheer will and dogged determination, grit, patience and a passion for hard work.

All those traits, along with humility, he ingrained into the minds of his six children who, today, play key roles in the vast business empire that he had built.

‘Teammates’

Eulogizing Sy when he passed away in January 2019 at the age of 94, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, who had known Sy since he was an impoverished grade-school boy vending newspapers and shining shoes in Carriedo, Manila in the late 1940s, said, “Though successful in his ventures, including BDO, the largest Philippine bank, Henry Sy (Sr.) remained humble, self-effacing and family-centered. He treasured his six children whom he said were ‘my teammates and friends in the office and at home.’”

If he were around today, the patriarch Sy would be beaming with pride over how much his offspring have grown what he had started. From his first shoe store, Shoemart in Quiapo, his businesses have expanded into SM Prime Holdings, one of the largest developers not only of malls, but residences, offices, hotels and convention centers as well, in Southeast Asia; SM Development Corporation (SMDC), one of the largest integrated property developers in the region; BDO Unibank, the largest private bank in the country (as of June 2024), various others in the transport, logistics, renewables and tourism sectors, all grouped under SM Investment Corporation (SMIC), currently one of the largest Southeast Asian business conglomerates.

Sy’s eldest child, Teresita “Tessie” Sy Coson, says she and her siblings Elizabeth (“Betty”), Henry Sy Jr., Hans, Herbert and Harley didn’t have much choice in terms of a career path; they were “born into a business family; it is really a destiny (or as a third-generation Sy put it, We were not forced (into the business), but we didn’t have a choice).”

Coson was the first of her siblings to immerse herself in work in ShoeMart, the first shoe store built by her father in Manila. She had a knack for sales and merchandising, and in 1972, he asked her to open his first department store in Manila.

She was 22 and had no formal training in running a department store, but she had confidence. “You don’t know how to be scared when you’re young,” Coson says. To dispel her feelings of inadequacy, she went to trade fairs, read up on business books and learned on the job.

Proving one’s self

Coson may have been given an advantage because she was the daughter of the business owner, but she knew that that only meant she had to work harder than anyone else to banish thoughts that things were made easy for her because of her status. “You have to really prove yourself to earn respect,” she said.

She progressed at work, and so did the family business, with the first shopping mall, SM North EDSA, rising in Quezon in 1985. Five years later, Coson was made president of SM Department Stores, now part of the SM Retail Group. From less than 10 stores when she started, that number grew to over 40 by the time she quit to concentrate on the family’s retail and savings bank, Banco de Oro, in the mid-1990s.

From a savings and retail bank, BDO was transformed, with Coson at the helm, into a uni-bank, with investment banking along with corporate and retail services.

BDO, then already the fifth largest Philippine bank in 2004, acquired, initially, 24 percent of the third largest bank in the country, Equitable; BDO’s stake was increased to 35 percent in 2005, and in 2007, BDO merged with Equitable to form Banco de Oro Unibank, then the country’s second largest bank.

Under Coson, BDO Unibank by 2008 rose to number one, a ranking it continues to hold today — the largest Philippine bank in terms of total assets, loans, deposits and trust funds under management, with a distribution network comprised of over 1,500 branches and some 5,000 ATMs across the country.

Today, Coson, 74, is chairperson of BDO Unibank and vice chairperson of her family’s holding company, SMIC. She is one of the most admired and well-respected businesswomen in the country not only for her brilliance and outstanding success in contributing to the remarkable growth of her family’s businesses, but also because, through all the power and influence great wealth as hers and her family could wield, she remains humble — as evinced, for instance, by a snapshot taken of her standing alone and unattended while waiting for her luggage to come along in a carousel at an airport terminal.

“Our parents taught us not to forget where we came from, we should never forget,” she told a group of young Filipino-Chinese entrepreneurs in a recent gathering.

Work even during the holidays

Like Coson, her younger sister Elizabeth says their father made her and her siblings aware from an early age that they have to be part of the family business. The children were asked to work, particularly during the holiday season, which saw the entire family at work in the department stores.

“‘Who will mind the store,’ my father would ask, and so, our remembrance of holidays, the busiest time in the retail industry, was of the entire family stationed at the Makati (department) store, working alongside our mom.

In terms of academics, Elizabeth says that while her father had many expectations, “in school, there was no need for us to be first or second honors; he would always advise us to just be good persons.”

Henry Sy Sr.’s second eldest child spent nine years with the Investor Relations group of SM Prime Holdings, today the country’s largest integrated property developer in terms of assets.

She then went on take the helm at SM Hotels and Conventions Corporation (SMHCC), which oversees the family’s hotel and conventions business. With a combined inventory of 1,980 rooms and over 38,000 sqms of leasable convention space, SMHCC’s properties are comprised of Taal Vista Hotel, Pico Sands Hotel, Conrad Manila, Lanson Place Mall of Asia, Radisson Blu Cebu, Park Inn by Radisson Bacolod, Park Inn by Radisson Clark, Park Inn by Radisson Davao, Park Inn by Radisson Iloilo and Park Inn by Radisson North Edsa.

She put up SMX Convention Center at the Mall of Asia Complex in 2007 which, with 21,000 sqm of leasable space, is currently the largest privately managed exhibition and convention center in the country.