Henry Sy, Philippine billionaire who started as a shoe seller, dies at 94

Henry Sy, who became a billionaire by turning a shoe shop into the biggest retailer in the Philippines, has died. He was 94. He died in his sleep this morning, his daughter Teresita Sy-Coson and Jose Sio, chairman of SM Investments said. Sy had a net worth of US$7.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the richest person in the Philippines. “This morning Mr Sy passed away peacefully as a happy man,” Sio said. Sy’s company started as a shoe shop in 1948. Today, SM Investments is an empire that includes SM Retail, which operates the nation’s biggest supermarkets and department-store chains; SM Prime Holdings, the largest shopping centre operator; and BDO Unibank. In the nation of more than 105 million people, his malls attract an average of 3.5 million shoppers a day. “It’s not overboard to consider Sy as the father of Philippine retail,” said Astro del Castillo, managing director at First Grade Finance. “His grocery, department stores and malls introduced the one-stop-shop concept in the country, and his malls changed not only the practice of retail but the way of life.” Sy amassed his fortune against the backdrop of unstable governments, political corruption and economic contractions, notably the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. He continued to expand his empire with new shopping malls and a bank that eventually became the nation’s largest by assets. Today, the group runs 62 department stores, 56 supermarkets, a network of 194 SaveMore grocery stores and 50 hypermarkets. Henry Sy was born in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen, in Fujian province. He emigrated to the Philippines at the age of 12 and started selling rice, sardines and soap at his father’s neighbourhood store in Manila in 1936. “Our store was so small it had no back or second floor, we just slept on the counter late at night after the store was closed,” he told The Philippine Star newspaper in 2006. The store was burned and looted during the second world war so Sy was called on to sell goods to help the family survive, according to Sy-Coson, the eldest of his six children. After the war, he sold shoes imported by US soldiers and set up of a footwear shop, providing him with the platform to later found ShoeMart, the nation’s largest chain and the first air-conditioned shop to sell shoes in the Philippines, in 1958. Every time the country is in a crisis, I think and decide where is the best way to go Henry Sy After opening six shoe shops, he diversified the business into clothing and soft goods because shoe manufacturers could not meet his demands for higher volumes. In 1972, Sy opened his first department store, two months after President Ferdinand Marcos placed the country under martial law. Marcos was ousted by a military and civilian uprising in 1986. Sy first expanded into property development in 1974 with the founding of Multi-Realty Development, formed to develop high-rise condominiums and town house units in prime parts of Makati in Metro Manila Sy opened his first shopping centre in 1985, when the economy was in its worst post-war slump. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, power cuts, a cement shortage and a series of coup attempts that dogged Corazon Aquino’s government did not deter Sy from opening more shopping centres. In 1994, he founded SM Prime to acquire existing malls and land for building new ones from his group’s companies. The same year, it raised about 6 billion pesos, about US$220 million at the time, in an initial public offering. The Mall of Asia, as Sy’s flagship mall is called, opened in 2006 with an Olympic-size skating rink, an eight-story film screen and 800 shops. The US$124 million centre was SM Prime’s 25th shopping centre and was then the nation’s biggest shopping complex. SM Investments, which raised US$532 million in an IPO in 2005, holds stakes in companies that built a Manila-casino resort with Melco Crown Entertainment. SM Prime now has 72 shopping malls in the Philippines, making it the biggest operator of shopping centers in the Southeast Asian nation. The company bought Sy’s three malls in China in 2008 and has built four more there since then, according to its website. “If I’d be given the chance I’d do it again,” Sy said in a July 2009 interview. “Every time the country is in a crisis, I think and decide where is the best way to go. We have to always think of ways to overcome these limitations.” Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

Henry Sy, Philippine billionaire who started as a shoe seller, dies at 94

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Born in Xiamen, he moved to Manila with his family and turned their shop into the biggest retailer in the Philippines

Born in Xiamen, he moved to Manila with his family and turned their shop into the biggest retailer in the Philippines