Aboitiz family biography outlines

Aboitiz is one of the oldest business families in the Philippines.  They date back 130 years.   

The first Aboitiz was a Basque Spaniard, Paulino Aboitiz.

 He arrived in the Philippines in the 1870s.  He married a daughter of a rich merchant, founded in 1920, Aboitiz & Co., and began building the family business, starting with abaca trade, first in Ormoc, Leyte and then Cebu, and later into inter-island shipping to bring goods across the Visayas.

Aboitiz family biography outlines and names

 Shipping was completely divested in 2016.  Paulino had a son, Don Ramon (1887-1974), regarded as the original family patriarch.  Ramon’s dictum was: “Any business where we can make money, we will go into.”  Don Ramon had “palabra de honor” (word of honor).

During World War I when falling abaca prices brought Aboitiz & Co.

to near bankruptcy, Don Ramon resisted pressures to walk away from their contracts.   He told his sibling: “The bigg