It surprises me that no one seems to care — or is there a news blackout? — on the crisis of the George Ty estate. After all, we’re talking a conglomerate that has its hands dipped in insurance (AXA Philippines), transport (Toyota), banking (Metrobank), and real estate development (Federal Land), not to mention education (Manila Tytana Colleges) and energy (Global Business Power Corporation). GT Capital also has major stakes in Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC), which builds roads and tollways.
And while one might like to think that these are private businesses anyway, and therefore none of us should care about what happens to it, that would be small-minded of us. Obviously, this means thousands of jobs on the line. We should also be looking at all the public projects of GT Capital, the ones that it was able to get traveling with Duterte on his official visits to countries like Japan. And let’s not even start about the thousands of Metrobank and AXA Philippines clients, the properties being developed by Federal, the subscribers of Global Business.
It’s also a surprise, that for a President who insists that he is against the abusive rich, the wealthy, the elite, and whose propagandists insist that he wants to tax the rich more than the poor, that Duterte has fallen silent on the Ty’s estate-in-crisis.