| 11th Congress | Political Reforms | Legislative Agenda |
| Legislative Record |

MANUEL B. VILLAR, Jr.

The public life of Manuel "Manny" B. Villar, Jr. straddles both the worlds of business and politics. His singular achievement is to have excelled in both.

He was born to a simple family on December 13, 1949 in Moriones, Tondo, Manila, the second child in a brood of nine of a government employee and a seafood dealer. At a very young age, he was already helping his mother sell shrimp and fish in the Divisoria market.

"I learned from my mother what it takes to be an entrepreneur," he revealed. "And it means to work really hard to achieve your dreams." In Divisoria, he marvelled at the volumes of sales the Chinese merchants were making and vowed early on to become an entrepreneur.

Manny Villar was a working student at the University of the Philippines, the premier institution of higher learning in the country, where he obtained his undergraduate and masters degree in business administration and accountancy. By then, he was already putting in long hours as a fish and shrimp trader where the action starts at the ungodly hours of the early morning when the catch lands on the market.

After graduation, he tried his hand as an accountant at the country's biggest accounting firm, Sycip Gorres and Velayo (SGV), but resigned shortly to embark on his own seafood delivery business. It was then that his innovative business mind was already apparent.

When a restaurant he was delivering stocks to did not pay him, he printed out "meal tickets" which he persuaded the restaurant owners to honor. He then sold these tickets at a discount to office workers. It took him one whole year to liquidate his receivables.

With his business down, he worked briefly as a financial analyst at the Private Development Corporation of the Philippines. His job was to sell World Bank loans but despite the attractive rates there were no takers. Convinced that he could make a go on his own again, he quit his job and promptly applied for one of the loans.

So with P10,000 initial capital in 1975, Villar bought two reconditioned trucks and started his sand-and-gravel business in Las Piņas. Las Piņas then was in the throes of a construction boom as one of the premier residential suburbs south of Manila.

It is here while delivering construction materials to big developers that Manny Villar came upon the idea of selling house-and-lot packages when the convention then was for homebuyers to buy lots and build on them.

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