Author: Lala Rimando

• LALA’s BOOK NOTES: ‘Liem Sioe Liong’s Salim Group: The Business Pillar of Suharto’s Indonesia’

  This biography explores how the Salim Group mastered Indonesia’s political economy under Suharto to build a massive conglomerate. When Suharto fell, the empire nearly collapsed. Offshore, Filipino banker Manny Pangilinan fiercely protected their Philippine assets, famously blocking a desperate sale of PLDT to rival tycoon John Gokongwei.

• LALA’s BOOK NOTES: Escaño – A Family Portrait

  Chronicled in the book, the Escaño family built a historic Philippine shipping and power monopoly. Today, they remain highly relevant through strategic dynastic alliances and diversified modern enterprises. They co-manage the Visayan Electric Company alongside the Aboitiz family, while their Lhuillier branch operates the massive Cebuana Lhuillier network.

• LALA’s BOOK NOTES: ‘Aboitiz – Family & Firm in the Philippines’

  This book is more than a standard corporate history. It is a strategic post-mortem of a family’s survival against total erasure. Tracing the Aboitiz empire from a 19th-century Basque trading post to a massive Philippine conglomerate, it asks a defining question: Can your business survive a century of storms?

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  Out-of-the-box style for a documentary film

  We had the sun and surf on one side, and the verdant mountain on the other

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  OMG, I’m a ‘film producer!

  I have crossed over — or dipped my foot — to a whole new way of storytelling that’s far from my text-based or article-heavy journalism usual.

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  How a documentary captured the humanity of John Gokongwei Jr.

  My decades of business journalism have taught me how straightforward, risk-averse, fact-based business people are when they are in front of a camera. How did we make Gokongwei Jr’s humanity shine in a documentary?

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  John Gokongwei: A multimedia biography project | Documentary premiere

  The documentary answered the question: What did the late tycoon John Gokongwei Jr, the subject of my biography project, leave behind?

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  Cesar Perez Rimando: A gentleman, visionary, and role model

  Goodbye, my hero.

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  How Villar gained what the Lopezes lost in ABS-CBN

  While we were sleeping, Filipino dollar-billionaire Manny Villar earned the right to (temporarily) use the channels that once belonged to the Lopez family’s ABS-CBN. This is how it happened.