Dennis Uy from Davao City is the latest Philippine tycoon. Previously, I never heard of him. But when PDu30 ascended to Malacanang, he is the byword when coffee shop conversations stray into people from Davao.
Reportedly (from Rappler), he donated P30M to PDu30’s campaign. Thereafter, he was buying companies left and right.
He is into shipping, oil, real estate, food, utilities, gambling, to telecommunications. He just bought the share of Chevron (the owner of Caltex) in the Malampaya natural gas venture. There was also rumor that he might end up buying all the gas stations of Caltex all over these islands. Presently he owns Phoenix, a fossil fuel company which also has gas stations all over the country.
He owns the Wendy’s Hamburger franchise in the Philippines and the convenience store Family Mart.
One of his biggest ventures was his quest to become the third telco player to counteract the duopoly of PLDT/Smart and Globe. For this, he was able to come up with a consortium but this appears to be struggling in beating the deadline for the third telco to be operational by July of this year.
By all indications, Dennis Uy has the magic touch but was only able to hit the limelight after President Duterte came into power. He is also into utilities like water, gambling and infrastructure.
To give some dazzle into his rise, he is now the local distributor of Ferrari.
He might have majored in rocket science because his rise into the top tiers of big business was like a rocket.
Prior to 2016, he only had 11 companies. Last year, he bought 19 companies.
His Udenna Corporation (this might be his holding company) has humongous liabilities amounting to about P104B.
Indeed, he is the miracle man from Davao City that only got noticed in this administration.
I am quite sure that he is not fronting for anybody.
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Another quintessential person from Davao is Sarah Duterte-Carpio, the heir apparent to his father’s presidency.
She said sometime ago that the prospect of her running for the presidency needed some deep contemplation. That is what soon to be candidates always say. So she might the woman to beat in 2022.
Then just today, it came out in the news that she in favor of the renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise by congress. She added that her father has a soft heart and has a soft spot for the more than 10,000 employees who would lose their jobs if ABS-CBN would be closed.
She will surely have a lot of ads come 2022 to be aired by ABS-CBN’s TV and radio networks.**
