For the Villars, everything is a family business

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3rd of 4 parts on Filipino tycoons invested in political parties
Part 1 |2025 Philippine elections: Where do billionaire-linked parties stand?
Part 2 | When business and politics mix: Enrique Razon’s empire

Everyone in the Philippines has heard of the Villars — it may be because of their exposure to their business or because of the family’s involvement in politics.

Family patriarch Manuel “Manny” Villar Jr. is again the richest Filipino billionaire, according to Forbes Magazine. He had an estimated net worth of $17.2 billion (P983.26 billion) as of April 2025, jumping from $11 billion (around P628.83 billion) in 2024, thanks to fair value gains or how his assets increased in value over time.

Villar has claimed he came from a humble background and rose from poverty, having lived in Tondo — a populous area in the city of Manila. But he was raised in a double-income household, with his father “earning nearly five times the average income” as a government employee at one point in his childhood.

In an attempt to get sympathy from and connect more with the public, his claims of having been impoverished were among his talking points during a failed presidential bid in 2010. One of his campaign jingles started with: “Nakaligo ka na ba sa dagat ng basura? Nag-Pasko ka na ba sa gitna ng kalsada? (Have you ever bathed in a sea of garbage? Have you spent your Christmas in the middle of the streets?)

His rags-to-riches story is one that even his children are using in their own political campaigns.

Real estate magnate

Manny is best known for his business in real estate. He has a listed property firm — Vista Land & Lifescapes Incorporated (VLL) and subsidiaries, namely: Brittany Corporation, Crown Asia Properties Incorporated, Vista Residences Incorporated, Camella Homes Incorporated, Communities Philippines Incorporated, VLL International Incorporated, and Vistamalls Incorporated (formerly Starmalls Incorporated).

It started with a concrete business in 1975, where Manny got the idea of selling house-and-lot packages. Camella — then Camella & Palmera Homes — gave Manny the billionaire status. The house-and-lot developer now has properties across the country, from Bataan to South Cotabato.

Brittany is the brand focused on luxury or premium properties, while Crown Asia offers “thematic communities” in the south of Metro Manila. Vista Residences, on the other hand, offers vertical developments.

Communities Philippines offers low-cost residential developments outside Mega Manila. Vistamalls develops commercial properties. VLL International, on the other hand, focuses on sourcing funds for the property firm.

VLL is chaired by Manny himself. It now has a presence in 147 cities and municipalities in the Philippines, helping VLL stay afloat amid the Philippine offshore gaming operator (POGO) exodus in Metro Manila.

“We remain optimistic with the industry especially in the provincial areas where demand continues to rise,” he said in a statement in November 2024.

Aside from residential projects, VLL has 42 malls, 59 commercial centers, and seven office buildings. Manny himself is often seen visiting Evia Lifestyle Center — a shopping mall in the middle of Daang Hari road connecting Las Piñas and Bacoor, Cavite.

VLL ended 2024 with an 11% increase in core net income, racking up P9.36 million. Total revenues stood at P36.96 million, led by real estate sales (P16.634 million), followed by rental income (P16.61 million), parking, hotel, mall administrative and processing fees (P2.11 million), and interest income (P1.081 million).

Manny has also ventured into developing a 2,000-hectare business district that cuts across 11 cities in the south of Metro Manila and nearby areas of Laguna and Cavite called Villar City, where Evia is located. During the pandemic, the Villar group also launched new brands such as Dear Joe, Green Centrale, All Green, All Bikes, Crossing Café, among others, to feature in its malls and subdivisions around the country.

Aside from VLL, the Villar family has five other businesses listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange: AllDay Marts Incorporated, AllHome Corporation, Golden MV Holdings Incorporated, Vistamalls Incorporated, and VistaREIT Incorporated. All his children have, at one point or another, worked for the family businesses.

The youngest, Camille, is listed as among the directors of VLL in its financial statement published in November 2024.

Foray into politics

Manny made his political debut in 1992, winning a seat in the House of Representatives to represent Las Piñas and Muntinlupa. He then served as House Speaker in 1998.

The Villars have kept the Las Piñas post within their family.

After Manny exhausted three terms in the lower chamber, his wife, Cynthia, was elected and became the representative of the lone district of Las Piñas until 2010. Manny moved to the Senate and was elected the upper chamber’s president during the third regular session of the 13th Congress.

Then their kids joined the circus — Mark was elected to the post from 2010 to 2016, or until he was appointed secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways by then-president Rodrigo Duterte. Camille is Las Piñas representative but is now seeking to be the fourth Villar to ever sit in the Senate.

“As the only millennial candidate [for senator in the family] and a member of the Filipino youth, I strongly believe I can contribute towards new politics in our country,” said Camille in October 2024.

Paolo, their eldest, does not seem to share the family’s political ambitions and instead focuses on their family business.

There are currently three Villars in public office — Mark joined his mother, Cynthia, in the Senate in 2022.

Running for public office is expensive. Over the last two decades, the Villars went from spending P38.5 million for Manny’s Senate bid in 2001 to P131.8 million for Mark’s Senate campaign in 2022.

Manny bowed out after his defeat in the 2010 presidential elections. Back then, candidates were presumed to have a P2 billion-P3 billion budget for their campaign.

“I got poorer in politics,” he said in 2015. “The best proof that I didn’t enrich myself in politics was I’m wealthier before I joined [politics].”

But members of the Villar family are still entrenched in politics. Manny himself is still the president of the Nacionalista Party (NP), which he has been part of since 2003.

Camille’s bad luck?

The odds may not be in Camille’s favor this year as she keeps getting the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

In 2024, the Villars’ NP inked a partnership with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP) for the midterm elections.

Although that alliance is currently in question — Camille has been running a campaign video being endorsed by Vice President Sara Duterte, who is currently on bad terms with Marcos’ political allies. The Villars have had a close relationship with the Dutertes, with Manny donating almost P15 million to fund Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential campaign.

Manny greeted the former president on his 80th birthday by referring to him as his “good friend.”

BIRTHDAY POST. Businessman and former politician Manny Villar, along with his wife Cynthia, son Mark, and daughter Camille, pose for a photo with former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte.

She skipped the administration’s Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas’ first campaign sortie days after the campaign ad went on air, and Marcos did not mention her name when he was endorsing candidates in a Batangas event.

Camille also failed to get the endorsement of Gwen Garcia, the governor of vote-rich Cebu.

Aside from campaign snubs, she has also had to deal with a vote-buying complaint from the Commission on Elections that has since been scrapped. The complaint came after she appeared at a raffle activity in Cavite with local candidates, where cash prizes were given.

Among the thorns in her political campaign is the issue surrounding PrimeWater. Many consumers from Bulacan, Cavite, and Caloocan have all complained about the Villar-owned utilities company’s services — or rather, its failure to deliver services.

Marcos has since ordered the Local Water Utilities Administration to investigate PrimeWater, and lawmakers from both houses of Congress have also sought to start their own probes.

Cat’s out of the bag

While Manny claimed he got poorer in politics, critics have long pointed out how his businesses gained as his family continued to influence policy.

In 2010, Manny faced a Senate inquiry on the alignment of the C-5 road extension project that would pass through his properties, and the sale of overpriced right-of-way to the government without disclosing possible conflict of interest.

“For the benefit of his corporations, Senator Villar made the Filipino people suffer the total amount of P6,226,070,427,” a Senate committee report dated January 18, 2010 read.

He was recommended to be censured but the chamber failed to act on the motion after Villar’s allies did not show up on the floor, resulting in a lack of quorum.

The Villars have also faced several land-grabbing accusations. It’s an issue some Marcos administration bets have had trouble expounding their respective stances on, when the Villars’ standing in the campaign was clear.

Urbanization in areas such as Cavite has long been a problem — farmlands being converted into commercial and residential spaces are hurting the agriculture industry in the province. There have been efforts to introduce a land use law, with Marcos even identifying it among his priority measures.

But national land use bills have languished in the Senate, specifically in the environment committee chaired by Cynthia since 2016.

In 2022, Cynthia engaged in a verbal tussle with Senator Raffy Tulfo on a farm-to-market road project during deliberations on the Department of Agriculture’s budget. Tulfo claimed that the project was prone to corruption, saying that instead of using funds to develop farms, identified areas are used to develop private resorts or subdivisions.

Cynthia defended developers, noting that their family business limits the land they buy.

“They allow conversion in cities and capital towns because if [developers] buy your land, they buy it expensive and you can reinvest the money,” Villar was quoted as saying in an ABS-CBN report. “They will make more money than planting on those lands…. It’s an investment decision…. You have to understand agriculture as a business also.”

Camille was one of the members of Congress who voted against granting ABS-CBN a franchise in 2020, leading to massive job cuts and the media giant’s pivot to the digital space.

The Villars’ Advanced Media Broadcasting System Inc. (AMBS) would bag two broadcast channels previously granted to ABS-CBN two years later. (TIMELINE: NTC distributes ABS-CBN frequencies)

Despite mishaps during the campaign period, it seems that Camille is still in the so-called “Magic 12” — she may still have a chance of getting a seat in the upper chamber to join her brother, Mark, whose term ends in 2028. Meanwhile, Cynthia is going against three candidates in her home turf for a House comeback.

Will the Filipino voting public want to keep all three Villars in power? – Rappler.com