Sino-Filipino billionaire and Belle Corp. founder Henry Sy died January 19 at the age of 94. For the past 11 years, Sy was named the richest person in the Philippines by Forbes magazine, which estimated his net worth at US$19 billion.
Belle Corp. is an investor in City of Dreams Manila, an integrated resort managed by a unit of Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd.
Sy was born in China and moved to the Philippines at the age of 12. In 1958 he started his career as a Manila shoe seller and grew it into an empire encompassing retail, real estate and later, gaming. Described by Inside Asian Gaming as “the king of the retail mall,” he owned SM Investments, the parent company of SM Retail Inc., the biggest chain of department stores and supermarkets in the Philippines; SM Prime Holdings Inc., the Philippines’ biggest operator of shopping malls; and a bank, BDO Unibank.
Belle Corp., originally a mining and oil company, added tourism and leisure property development interests in 1989, acquired Premium Leisure & Amusement Inc. in 2010 and in 2012 entered the gaming industry when it made a deal with Melco to develop and operate City of Dreams Manila. Last year, Belle Corp. posted an 18 percent boost in revenues from City of Dreams to PHP1.73 billion (US$32.8 million) for the first half. City of Dreams was responsible for almost 62 percent of Belle Corp.’s total revenues from January through June 2018.
Sy stepped down as chairman of the board of SM Investments in 2014 and was succeeded by his son, Henry Sy Jr. He is survived by his wife, Felicidad Tan-Sy and six children, reported GGRAsia, which also noted that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte attended his wake.
