The PR & Events Circuit

The PLDT Home Ambassador recalls her journey to empowerment “It felt like forever.”  This is how Miss Universe Philippines 2023 Michelle Marquez Dee described the moment when she was announced as the winner last May. “All you can hope for is that destiny is on your side — and it was on that night of May 13. When they finally called my name, honestly, I just felt like all the hard work paid off. When you’ve dedicated your whole life and everything for that moment to happen, mapapabagsak ka. I actually bent over because of relief, happiness, and gratitude.”   28-year-old Michelle will represent the Philippines at Miss Universe in El Salvador in November.   She is the finest fit, even PLDT Inc. Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan himself said upon meeting her, along with the other Miss Universe Philippines queens at a PLDT and Smart exclusive meet-and-greet with executives and employees at Ramon Cojuangco Building in Makati City recently. “We could think of no better woman to prou...

Recognizing the need of many Filipino children towards having adequate school resources, SM Store launched a program called Shop & Share to Bridge Access to Education, which aims to help many underprivileged students in their learning journey. During the entire month of August, several SM Stores across the country participated in the initiative that allowed their loyal customers to take part in helping a student in need through donating a school kit. Originally retailing for P149 per bundle, the school kits were made available for customer purchase and donation at a reasonable amount of P99. Last September 1, 2023, SM Store started to turn over more than 13,000 notebooks to thousands of underprivileged pupils in different parts of the Philippines.  SM Store CSR represented by Aries Pineda, Sr. Manager and SM Store Ilo-Ilo represented by Ms. Yvonnie Delgado, Branch Manager, donated hundreds of school kits to Efraim M. Santibanez National High School, an SM Foundation Inc. partne...

One of Asia’s leading financial publication, Asiamoney  has, for a third year in a row, named Universal Robina Corp. (URC) as the Philippines’ most outstanding company in the consumer staples sector in its Asia’s Outstanding Poll 2023 Asiamoney handed the award to URC, one of the Philippines’ largest food manufacturers, after an exhaustive survey of the region’s top capital movers and financial experts. URC president and CEO Irwin Lee said clinching the award three times in a row "serves as a validation of the quality of our product, and a testament to the unyielding trust and confidence that our valued customers have in us”. “It is also a recognition of the remarkable dedication shown by our workforce, and a reaffirmation of the overall excellence that defines our company,” he added. Asiamoney is a top source of news, commentaries and data services for international capital markets. The  2023 Asia’s Outstanding Company Poll  covered over 1,225 fund managers, analysts, ba...

Mynt, the holding company of the Philippines’ number one finance super app, GCash, has entered into an agreement with Globe Telecom Inc. and Payment One, Inc. to acquire a 100% stake in Electronic Commerce Payments, Inc. (ECPay), for PHP3.0 billion. Mynt believes its acquisition of ECPay will strengthen its position as a partner for growth of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME). This also allows Mynt to create a more comprehensive suite of solutions that can help drive financial progress for MSMEs. (L-R)  Jasmin Montelibano, President and CEO of ECPay, Martha Sazon, President and CEO of Mynt, Issa Cebreira, Chief Commercial Officer of Globe Group, and Jude Aguilar, President, Payment One, Inc. “Mynt, through its fintech subsidiaries, has already built the largest digital ecosystem for our users which extends all the way to the grassroots level. ECPay is a big boost to our financial inclusion journey as we find synergies with their 570 Biller and Portfolio partners, 490,000+...

 Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) has proven its reputation as a trailblazer in the industry anew by being the first bank in the Philippines to run workloads on Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) AWS Local Zones location in Manila, Philippines.  “This is a huge development in the AWS expansion in the Asian region and addresses response time issues for mission critical applications that require low latency. This in turn allows service providers like us to deliver digital solutions to our customers much better,” said Ryan Acosta, UnionBank’s Head for Infrastructure and Service Management. As the Philippines’ leading bank of innovation, UnionBank has been investing heavily in cloud-enabled solutions as part of its continuous efforts to serve customers better. In fact, UnionBank was the first major bank in the Philippines to be fully hosted in the cloud, completing its migration to AWS in 2022 and two weeks ahead of schedule. The move to the cloud resulted in numerous improve...