Razon takes over reins of Manila Water

Enrique Razon Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Enrique Razon Jr. now officially heads Manila Water Co. (MWC), Inc., taking the reins from the Ayala Group more than a year after they reached a subscription agreement that gave the ports tycoon majority voting rights in the company.

Razon is now the director, chair of the Board of Directors, president and chief executive officer, chair and Member of the Executive Committee of MWC, which provides water services to six million people in Metro Manila and Rizal province.

The change in directors and officers was effective starting June 3, according to MWC’s disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on June 4. Prior to this, MWC was headed by Ayala Corp., the country’s oldest conglomerate. Fernando Zobel de Ayala used to be the MWC chair of both the Board of Directors and Executive Committee, while his older brother Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala was the board’s vice chair and director.

Their departure from the head of the MWC table following the Razon group’s entry as a strategic partner through a P10.7-billion deal marked the end of more than two decades of leadership since the government turned over the operation of water utilities in Metro Manila to the private sector. When Razon’s purchase agreement with the Ayala Group was announced last year, the Inquirer reported that the change of ownership was also aimed at appeasing President Duterte, who threatened in 2019 to jail and sue officials of the two water companies for allegedly benefiting from the contracts that were supposedly disadvantageous to both the government and the public.

An Ayala official told the Inquirer then that the deal to bring in Razon as a “political white knight” was hatched and executed within two and a half weeks, with the Ayala group approaching the ports tycoon with an invitation to take a stake in Manila Water.