Life stories of Indian and South East Asian business leaders

Henry Sy, Founder of SM Investments/SM Group of the Philippines (1934-2019)

Season 1 Episode 2

Henry Sy, the founder of SM Investments/SM Group (https://www.sminvestments.com/) started with a small shoe shop in Manila and built the business into the largest shopping mall business in the Philippines and China along with many department stores, supermarkets and grocery stores. The business also includes Banco de Oro and numerous real estate projects. At the time I interviewed him in 1998 his business was already massive but much of the growth was in the years after my interview and for a number of years before his death at the age of 94 he was considered to be the wealthiest Filipino. This chapter appears in my book, Added Value -the life stories of leading South East Asian business people published by Murmeli in 1999.

Please note that these interviews took place some time ago - over 25 years ago in the case of the South East Asian life story book and around 10 to 15 years ago in the case of the two Indian life story books. However, their stories are correct to the time of the interviews and the objective is to demonstrate the entrepreneurial skills they exhibited at the time of the interviews in building their businesses.