Lucio ‘Bong’ Tan Jr. spreads his wings

Lucio ‘Bong’ Tan Jr. spreads his wings

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideBusop.htm?f=2009/august/10/vicagustin.isx&d=2009/august/10

FOR a change, there is something positive brewing among the various contending factions of the extended Lucio Tan family.

The publicized feud between the taipan and his brother Mariano, as well as Tan’s hospitalization after suffering a slip while alighting from a helicopter, have apparently served as a wake-up call for his eldest son, Lucio Jr.

The San Francisco-educated Tan has been seen holding a series of meetings with HSBC Philippine treasurer and head of capital markets Jose Arnulfo “Wick” Veloso, along with MRC Allied chairman Benjamin Bitanga.

According to the grapevine, the young Tan plans to raise P2 billion for a still undisclosed project and has apparently been consulting Bitanga, who had sold to the elder Tan the shell company of what is now the publicly-listed MacroAsia, on how to best raise the sizable amount.

Rather than compete and jostle with fellow siblings for a piece of the Tan empire, the 43-year-old son, if the grapevine is to be believed, apparently wants the P2-billion capital that he planned to raise to start his own little kingdom independent of his 75-year-old father’s airline, banking, real estate, tobacco, hotel, and school conglomerate.

It was not immediately clear how the planned capital-raising exercise will hew with the recent appointment of the junior Tan as president of Tanduay Distillery.