Remembering Filinvest's 'bow and arrow' couple

Like a bow and arrow, each is useless without the other.

- Brix Lelis

That is how tycoon Josephine Gotianun-Yap described the relationship between her late parents Andrew and Mercedes Gotianun – whose love and passion built the Filinvest empire from the ground up.

Originally based in Cebu, Andrew made a living salvaging naval vessels for inter-island shipping after the Second World War. Many of the families in the province were involved in that business at the time.

Eventually, the Gotianun family moved to Manila in search of new opportunities and a fresh path forward.

"When my dad, Andrew Gotianun, arrived from Cebu in 1955, he was starting from scratch. He had just sold their family's shipping business," JGY said in her speech during a media event last Friday.

"He decided to take a different path. With grit and courage, he came to explore a city where he knew no one and where no one knew him," she recalled.

According to JGY, the late tycoon fueled his ambitions and took the high stakes by borrowing money against the family's properties.

"He had his widowed mother, a widowed sister-in-law with two daughters, a sister, and his family all looking up to him. And he just had another new baby girl, making that three generations of women (dependent) on him. I was that baby," JGY said.

But Andrew was not alone in his pursuit of success because at every step of the way, there was someone who believed in his vision as much as he did.