First Pacific

First Pacific

Founded in 1981 and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 1988, First Pacific is the publicly traded investment company through which the Salim family and CEO Manuel Pangilinan deploy capital across Southeast Asia. The firm traces its wealth origin to the Salim Group, the Indonesian industrial and consumer conglomerate built by Anthoni Salim's father, and still answers to the Salim family's near-majority control. Unlike a single-family office, First Pacific operates as a listed holding company, giving it permanent capital and public-market accountability. First Pacific concentrates its balance sheet in a handful of platform companies across four sectors: telecommunications, infrastructure, consumer food products, and natural resources. Its three largest holdings are PLDT, the Philippines' largest telecom operator; Metro Pacific Investments Corporation (MPIC), which controls toll roads, water utilities, and power distribution assets across the Philippines; and Indofood, Indonesia's largest packaged-food company. The firm also holds positions in FPM Power and Philex Mining. Its posture relies on operator control — Pangilinan serves as chairman of both PLDT and MPIC, giving First Pacific direct influence over the management decisions that drive earnings growth. First Pacific does not disclose AUM; its scale is expressed through the market capitalizations and operating revenues of its controlled affiliates, which collectively dominate their respective markets. The firm has co-invested alongside the Gokongwei family's JG Summit Holdings in Philippine infrastructure and telecom projects, reflecting a pattern of partnership with other dynastic Asian families. In March 2018, Chairman Anthoni Salim noted that MPIC had delivered an eighth consecutive year of record earnings while PLDT was regaining market leadership in mobile quality metrics, signaling the firm's reliance on operational turnarounds rather than portfolio churn to compound value. The firm's structural differentiator is the Pangilinan operating playbook: rather than diversify across funds, First Pacific installs its CEO as chairman of portfolio companies and applies a uniform governance and capital-allocation discipline across those entities. This blurs the line between asset manager and industrial holding company, giving the firm the ability to extract value through board-level control without relying on exit events.