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Sy, Gotianun among top Asian businesswomen

Rappler.com

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Two 2nd generation Filipino-Chinese businesswomen made it to the 2013 list of Forbes Asia magazine's list of top 50 stellar women leaders

BEST IN ASIA. Filipino businesswomen Teresita Sy-Coson (left) and Lourdes Josephine Gotianun-Yap (right) among Asia's best. Photos from Forbes.com

MANILA, Philippines – Two second-generation Filipino-Chinese businesswomen made it to the 2013 list of Forbes Asia magazine’s list of top 50 stellar women leaders.

Lourdes Josephine Gotianun-Yap and Teresita Sy-Coson are among “Asia’s 50 Businesswomen In The Mix,” or a premium selection of women who lead companies that posted higher profits in 2012 and whose accomplishments stood out among “hundreds of other notable executives, investors and owners,” Forbes said.

Both are respective daughters of the country’s richest, Andrew Gotianun Sr. and Henry Sy Sr., who placed 17th and first in Forbes’ 2012 list of 40 Richest in the Philippines.

This is Sy-Coson’s second year in the list. Sy-Coson, 62, is the eldest daughter who has been steering the family’s different business interests largely via SM Investments Corp (SMIC), the family’s listed holding firm. SMIC had dislodged the country’s biggest telecommunications giant PLDT as the country’s most valuable listed firms several times in 2012 and early 2013.

The Sy group has the the widest network of malls (SM Prime Holdings) in the Philippines — some of them among world’s biggest — as well as the largest bank in terms of assets (BDO Unibank).

Most of the businesses benefit from the billions of dollars-worth of overseas Filipino’s remittances, which stayed resilient despite the global slowdown. Property development unit (SMDC) is aggressively building residential units to capture the appetite of overseas Filipinos for property investment.

Gotianun-Yap, 57, on the other hand, is the 3rd of the 4 children of the founder of Filinvest Development Corp, a property development firm where she is president and CEO. This is her first time on the list.

In October, she succeeded her husband, Joseph Yap, as president and CEO of Filinvest Land.

Among the other notable women in Forbes’ list are Eva Chen, the co-founder and CEO of antivirus software firm Trend Micro, now the biggest in Asia and 3rd in the world.

Some are also continuing the family business and bringing it to new heights. For example, Sabrina Chao, a shipping heiress from Hong Kong. She’s 38 and among the youngest chairperson in the industry.

Some are self-made, including Zhou Xiaoguang who started her costume-jewelry business when she was 16. Her company now boasts of yearly sales of half a billion dollars. – Rappler.com

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