Two patriarchs once stood shoulder to shoulder atop a major Philippine bank in the practical style of old Manila capitalism. One served as chairman, the other as vice chairman. Their families were widely understood to be the principal shareholders and real decision-makers. In 1999, they executed a clean, record-setting exit worth P31.9 billion.

For Nosy Tarsee, it looked like a textbook move: sell the bank, redeploy capital, and chase more strategic pursuits.

In hindsight, that sale marked a contrasting fork in the road. Their heirs have since delivered striking lessons in how family capitalism can fail, spectacularly, in opposite ways.

One family’s emotional heirloom is a once-dominant broadcaster, badly wounded years after losing its franchise in 2020.

Public filings paint a grim picture: a P6.09-billion net loss in 2024 following a P12.83-billion loss in 2023. Liabilities reached P42.47 billion, compared with just P2.52 billion in stockholders’ equity.

By the first nine months of last year, another P2.24-billion loss had accumulated. Market capitalization in April 2026 hovered around P3.05 billion.

The company is now a shell of its former self. Management asked the family holding company for a P2-billion infusion spread over five years to meet obligations, protect jobs, and shield retirees from the pain of liquidation.

One faction resisted, citing unresolved governance issues and the need for stronger safeguards. Relatives aligned with the broadcaster’s side pushed hard for support.

The disagreement escalated into a bitter leadership struggle at the holding company level: an attempted ouster, a court challenge, and a judicial order freezing any removal pending resolution of the case.

The quarrel displays the intimacy and venom of an inheritance dispute, though it was made to look like a question of capital allocation.

One camp positions itself as the custodian of a national legacy and of its employees; the other as the guardian of capital discipline. Both invoke responsibility. Only one side appears willing to write the check. And this is over a relatively modest P2 billion by conglomerate standards.

Complicating the picture is another internal battle over proceeds from the family’s more valuable energy assets, which sit lower in a layered holding structure. Recent transactions involving a gas business stake and a hydropower portfolio triggered a fresh uproar, with public questions about loss of control over key assets and how proceeds were being redeployed.

Cash generated at the base becomes intensely political as it travels upward through the pyramid. The family is not destitute. But it is deeply disunited —unable to agree on how to treat a fading media legacy or share the fruits of its still-functioning engine.

Now contrast the other family. Their patriarch’s pet industrial project, a massive petrochemical complex, has proven ruinous. The venture represented a roughly P150-billion bet. Additional equity infusions followed: P11 billion in 2023 and up to P17.1 billion approved in late 2024.

By early 2025, the unit entered an indefinite commercial shutdown. Debt in the petrochemical unit approached P100 billion, with losses of about P17 billion in the prior year.

Profitable operations elsewhere — retail, real estate, aviation, food, and strategic equity stakes — continued generating strong recurring income, reaching P31.9 billion from continuing operations in 2025. The group transferred debt upward, maintained deep borrowing capacity, and kept functioning as a formidable cash machine.

The 1999 bank sale did not merely provide liquidity for both clans. Over time, it exposed a deeper divide: the difference between financial capacity and family governability. One dynasty demonstrates the danger of having too much cohesion and too much capital behind a flawed dream — they could keep funding an uneconomic project long after the market delivered its verdict.

The other shows the opposite trap: valuable underlying assets undermined by disunity. They possess resources but lack the shared trust or doctrine needed to allocate even modest sums toward a wounded heirloom without descending into a public feud and court battles.

Two once-allied families, two opposite failures of capitalism.