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Andrew Tan was 27 years old when he, quite by accident, learned there was a man who set up a small distillery in Rosario, La Union.

The man who Tan can only recall by his last name, Posadas, was a retired chemist of La Tondeña, makers of rum. Posadas was good at making spirits but he never learned to do business. Besides, he was afflicted with a deadly cancer he never told his family about.

Andrew Tan offered to take over the company, named Far East Distillers. He did not buy the firm. He merely paid Posadas a comfortable salary. But he died two years after setting up the distillery in 1997.

Tan had a problem. He did not have a chemist he could trust with his soul. Instead of hiring one, he went to the United Kingdom, Spain and France to try and learn the art of making distilled spirits.

He learned fast but did not have the full mind of a chemist. What he knew all along was there is a market for cheaper liquor that is called whiskey, better than gin or rum but only a little more expensive.

His first product was Andy Players whiskey that sold like hotcakes. But like all brands of cheaper drinks, its life did not last that long. In 1981, he expanded the distillery and moved to Caloocan City. Long after he came up with what is generally accepted as brandy, called Emperador. It is now the biggest of such distilled spirit.

While raking in profits from the distillery, Tan established a reputation in the banking system as a good client.

Tan says he is grateful to his teachers in Hong Kong where he had his early education. He is proud to show the scar above the elbow of his left hand. He was whipped hard by his teacher with a bamboo stick — split in the middle from use at the tip—for mere childish behavior.

The incident left him with a deep sense of discipline that would later help him in many other business ventures.

Now 58 years old, Tan is not exactly youngest (Enrique Razon is 47) among the billionaires but he slugged it out alone, very much like Lucio Tan who started as a minor employee of Bataan Cigar and Cigarette Factory.

Tan is now in the company of taipans like Lucio Tan, John Gokongwei, Henry Sy, George S.K. Ty and Tony Tan Caktiong, together with the old rich like the Zobel de Ayalas and Eduardo Cojuangco who is also of Chinese descent.

He had it as tough as Lucio Tan who did not have much except a determination to succeed and the knowledge that success is made easier with some brains and more hard work.

He makes sure that the profits he makes are plowed back into expansion and other projects. He finds no extreme pleasure in living in a lavish home. He continues to live in a relatively modest home in Quezon City.

Apart from being very Chinese in that way, he might have been helped living a modest life by having a Chinese-Filipina wife from the other end of the country – Aparri.

Tan does not have the swagger of a billionaire. He moves about practically by himself, treats his people with care and respect. Modesty is probably his greatest virtue.

A combination of a Chinese from Hong Kong with a Chinese-Filipina wife with Ilocano sense of thrift and hard work is, as if by design, a good first step toward a comfortable life.

Tan took all of 31 years to be the country’s fifth richest man. He is only 58 years old.

Tan is No. 5 in a list of 40 richest Filipinos as reported by Forbes Asia Philippines Rich List. His holding company, Alliance Global Group, is worth $1.2 billion. Not bad for one who started producing distilled spirits without studying chemistry.

It is noticeable that among the top nine richest Filipinos, six are of Chinese descent. In fact, even Eduardo M. Cojuangco descended from a Chinese family. Ten years after 1979 when he acquired a "rotten" distillery in Rosario, La Union, and parlayed it into a competitor of the giants after moving the firm to Caloocan City, Tan ventured into his first condominium building on Annapolis street in Makati. He was competing with the giants in the property development business. He studied his market closely and figured out he could compete by selling the units at P24,000 per square meter. Today, the price in The Fort, dominated by Ayala Land, is P100,000 per square meter. Even higher in Global City at P110,000 per square meter.

While Tan never really even took a rest competing in the property business, having constructed 220 condominium buildings with 100,000 units in various parts of Metro Manila, he was, at the same time, laying his hands on other ventures. To begin with, he formed two other property development companies: Empire East and Suntrust.

However, he feels his greatest contribution to his country is the construction of eight multi-story buildings that house call centers and a few more edifices now home to large multinational companies like Citibank NA.

They are located in a 24-hectare property Tan named Eastwood City Cyberpark, a self-contained city overlooking the Marikina Valley.

Tan told Malaya Business Insight in an interview that half of his profits come from property development. Alliance Global owns 50 percent of McDonald’s with George Yang.

Tan feels the 25,000 jobs he has created in his business are not enough. There will be more jobs when his resort complex – a gaming cum tourism project – comes into full bloom.

The complex has three hotels with more than 1,000 rooms. Tan co-owns the project with Genting, a Malaysian gaming-tourism operation.

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