I rarely — if at all — care about the movements among big business and oligarchs, except when they are in cahoots with government and China to push for anti-people policies, and of course when the issue at hand is one that is about oppressing workers, demolishing the urban poor, and / or violating basic rights. And in this country, we’ve got a lot of that.
But this bit about what has happened since George Ty’s death in November 2018, via Vic Agustin’s Money Go Round column in the Inquirer, piqued my interest. On the surface, and admittedly, it was this narrative of two wives — one Filipino, one Chinese — that made it hard to ignore. (One wonders why Mother Lily isn’t making this into a Mano Po film yet, harhar.) But a bit of research on Ty, and one realizes that what has actually hung in the balance since Ty’s death are far more important: (1) thousands of Filipino jobs, (2) billions of pesos in people’s investments and savings, and (3) the national and global business conglomerate of the ninth richest man in the Philippines.
Even more surprising? If not suspicious, is how it seems like it’s being kept quiet, this whole Ty Estate crisis. Because after it filled mainstream news in February 2019, suddenly there was complete silence about what’s been going on. Save for Agustin’s June 2019 piece, there is practically nothing. No credible status update about Ty’s estate, a silence that puts at risk everyone that works and invests with GT Capital, but also puts at risk the credibility of the whole Ty conglomerate.