Chairman bags back-to-back awards
As if getting appointed as special envoy twice by two Presidents in less than two years is not enough, RMR Capital chairman Dr. Reghis M. Romero II, DHum, has recently been conferred two awards by two prestigious international organizations in a span of just two days.
The first was Peace Laureate for business management and leadership from the Sino-Phil Asia International Peace Awards Foundation held at the EDSA Shangri-La Plaza Hotel last January 27, and the second was the Rotary Golden Wheel Award for protecting the environment given by the Rotary International at the Novotel Hotel, Quezon City the following day.
The Rotary Award was in recognition of Dr. Romero II’s significant contribution to environmental protection through corporate activities involving practically his entire conglomerate and, on some occasions, the Order of the Knights of Rizal, which he once headed as supreme commander and now as member of its Council of Elders.
Dr. Romero II’s environmental crusade is spearheaded by RMR Capital’s environmental subsidiary Philippine Ecology Systems Corp., or PhilEco, which collects garbage from Manila and other parts of the metropolis for transport by barge to its sanitary landfill in Navotas. PhilEco also turns western Manila’s sewage into gray or safe water before its discharge to the Manila Bay.
At the same time, RMR Capital’s flagship firm R-II Builders is credited for transforming the Smokey Mountain dumpsite into a mid-rise residential complex called “Paradise Heights”.
R-II Builders’ reclamation of the 79-hectare offshore area fronting the Smokey Mountain used only marine sands to avoid quarrying of inland sources of filling materials.
Another RMR Capital subsidiary, the Harbour Centre Port Terminal Inc., has been regularly involved in water cleanup activities in the surrounding offshore area.
Both subsidiaries – R-II Builders and Harbour Centre – have been also conducting treeplanting and other environmental activities in Metro Manila and beyond.
So do RMR Capital’s RLand Development Corp. and PrimeHomes, both preserving the natural topography in their horizontal and vertical construction activities.
Thus, Dr. Romero II’s environmental advocacy remains consistent with his socioeconomic pursuit of building better lives.
And as a peace laureate for his leadership and business management skills, Dr. Romero II has turned a one-room contracting business into both a full-scale network of construction companies and a diversified conglomerate in less than 35 years.
Yet, he started it all on September 8, 1988 at the height of military mutinies, coup attempts, brownouts, fuel crisis, capital flight and brain drain.
“At that point, I could have gone abroad as my friends and colleagues already did, or followed our eldest brother to the US. But instead, I put up R-II Builders, thinking that with the business sector’s confidence in the economy at its lowest, there would be a dearth of construction companies to implement government projects.
“True enough, R-II Builders, though a one-room affair then, quickly started winning contracts here and there, Dr. Romero II recalled.
Still, that small company has enabled Dr. Romero II to build a large conglomerate, and the rest is history.
Dr. Romero II took up a Bachelor of Science degree in Foreign Service at the University of the Philippines, hoping to become a diplomat, but eventually became a top marketing executive in a construction-related company instead, not knowing that he would become an entrepreneur.
And as an entrepreneur, he put up his company from scratch, hoping to grow it just big enough to make a difference in the construction industry and in people’s lives, but it became a large conglomerate and turned him into a business mogul instead, not knowing that he would, after all, become a diplomat.
That is how Dr. Romero II has come full circle in his academic, professional, entrepreneurial and patriotic pursuits.
Today, Dr. Romero II is the founding chairman of the mother and holding firm RMR Capital and all of its various subsidiaries that include Quadruple A companies R-II Builders and PhilEco, and property developer R Land Development Inc., among many others.
