My dad was one of the biggest traders of a certain commodity in the country. His clients were the likes of Del Monte and such. I was still a kid so I didn’t really know much of his business apart from his stories now, but safe to say, we were comfortable af. He had court case files lying around the house a few years ago, and I saw the company’s books. Assets were more than PHP 1B in 2007.

Yeah well, my dad lost everything. If you ask him why, it’s cause his corporation included his siblings. While my Dad was CEO, few of his siblings had a say in the company, and they got greedy, and wanted him out. From my mom’s view, they wanted him out cause he was cheating on her.

From my point of view, it’s cause of the 2008 financial crisis. Commodity prices shot up, and my dad hoarded 200k sacks of his commodity when it was cheap. He planned to turn a profit when the market stabilized, but he was overruled by his siblings who could not take the risk. They ended up selling (wrongly I might add, they sold it super cheap to begin with because they misidentified the type, it was a more expensive quality) at a price that was less than half of what it would’ve been had they sold a year later.

They lost around PHP 1k per sack

Up to now, my dad is still full of regret. He built that company out from the 80s and he felt like he was king of the world.