Henry Sy

Henry Sy, Sr. is the founder and chairman of SM Prime Holdings, the largest retailer in the Philippines. Acknowledged as the country’s "Retail King," he has come a long way from the modest shoe store he set up in Quiapo in 1946, to become Asia's biggest shopping mall operator with 30 malls throughout the Philippines.

According to Forbes' list of the World's Billionaires 2008, Lucio Tan (Rank 785, Net Worth $1.5 Billion) and Henry Sy (Rank 843, Net Worth $1.4 Billion) are the richest in the Philippines and the only Filipinos to make it to the World's Billionaires list.

Henry Sy, or rather, his SM super malls, is quite familiar to many Filipinos. The nation's "Retail King," he is the founder and chairman of SM Prime Holdings, the largest retailer in the Philippines, and the owner of Banco de Oro, Universal Bank, and China Banking Corporation. Furthermore, his SM Development Corporation is involved in many major real estate and property developments throughout the country.

Sy has a rags to riches story encompassing his humble beginnings as a Quiapo shoe store owner in 1946 to becoming the largest shopping mall operator in Asia, with 30 malls and counting throughout the Philippines. Although his background does project a poor, hard worker turned super-successful tycoon, his inspirational transformation is tainted by employee exploitation, as is criticized by many readers in my previous post about the Philippines' rich.