The TDG Economic Briefing is an annual event held by the Transnational Diversified Group (TDG) in order to provide its member companies with the inputs critical in formulating their Strategic Business Plans for the year 2001 and beyond.

Through the years, the inputs from highly regarded guest speakers from the government, the private sector and the academe have provided TDG Managers with invaluable insights and projections with regards to the economy, government policies, industry trends, and the global and regional socio-political situations.

Hence, to launch the Group’s 2001 Annual Strategic Planning cycle, this year’s Economic Briefing was held on Thursday, the 17th of August, 2000 from 1:30- 6:00 p.m. at the Lighthouse Theater, NYK Harbor Centre 1. 

The list of this year’s resource speakers as well as the major topic they delved on are the following:

• Mr. Joel D. Consing
  Vice-President - Capital Markets, HSBC
  (Global Markets - US)
  

• Mr. Morihiro Yamamoto
  Vice-President - DBP Daiwa Securities Capital Markets
  (Global Markets - Japan)
  

• Hon. Mario L. Relampagos
  Undersecretary - Department of Budget and Management
  (Macroeconomic Prospects and Opportunities in 2001)
  

• Ms. Janette Toral
  President - DigitalFilipino.com
  (Rise of E-Commerce Trade and the Philippine E-Commerce Law)
  

• Mr. Ramon Garcia, Jr.
  President - DFNN.com
  (E-Commerce from the Business Perspective)
  

• Mr. Dennis M. Arroyo
  Fellow - Social Weather Station (SWS) and Economist/Writer - Philippine Daily Inquirer
  (Macroeconomic Opportunities and Emerging Consumer Trends)
  

• Hon. Renato De Villa
  Chairman - Independent Insights, Inc.
  (Current Peace and Order Situation)

A fuller listing of the speakers’ background expertise is as follows:.

JOEL CONSING

Mr. Joel Consing, is presently the Vice President for Capital Markets at the Treasury and Capital Markets group of the HSBC.

Mr. Consing’s primary responsibility at the HSBC is to develop its debt capital markets business in the Philippines.  This includes - setting up the team, product development, debt origination, transaction development (or execution), investor interface, ensuring the implementation of international best practices in the local market, and providing the proper environment for sustainable learning of debt capital market professionals. 

Within eleven months from set up, the team successfully closed four very high profile financing deals considered benchmark transactions in the domestic capital market from a structure, execution, and method of origination points of view.

It is interesting to note that Mr. Consing created the country’s first Fixed Rate Corporate Notes (“FXCN”) issues extending 10 years for PLDT.  This structure was widely covered in both the international and domestic press.

Prior to HSBC, he worked with the following institutions as the Head or VP for either Investment Banking, Corporate Finance or Capital Markets  --- Bankers Trust Singapore, Baring Brothers Limited, Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Multinational Bancorporation

Mr. Consing took his Liberal Arts degree at the De La Salle University where he was a Jose Rizal Honors Certificate recipient.

MARIO RELAMPAGOS 

Undersecretary Mario L. Relampagos is considered the resident expert on Economics and Public Finance Management in the Department of Budget and Management.  He was the former administrator of the Virginia Tobacco Fuelwood Corp. and has been in the Dept. of Budget since 1990.

He took up his Master’s in Economics at the University of the Philippines.   He was also a recipient of a Rockefeller Grant.

DENNIS ARROYO

Mr. Dennis Arroyo was invited as the speaker for two topics: “Macroeconomic Prospects and Opportunities” as well as on  “Consumer and Demographic Trends.” He is presently taking his Doctorate in Economics at the University of the Philippines – Diliman and his field of specialization is Internet economics – the very subject of his doctoral dissertation.  A real achiever, Mr. Arroyo was given the Most Outstanding Student award while still an undergraduate at U.P Diliman.

Mr. Dennis Arroyo is also a specialist in poverty reduction, and has co-authored a book published by the United Nations.  One of his papers was in fact cited by Dr. Amartya Sen of the Harvard University, Nobel Prize winner and the world’s foremost authority on poverty studies.

Mr. Arroyo is a Fellow of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) for which he has written more than 60 research papers and monographs.  He was also the past Chairman of the research committee of MORES, the Marketing and Research Society of the Philippines.

With his background, he has given similar economic briefings for the Senate, for Cabinet members, the top management of San Miguel Corp. and Shell Phils., and for the faculty of the Asian Institute of Management.  

Furthermore, Mr. Arroyo was a former consultant of the United Nations Development Program and the Asian Development Bank. 

He presently writes regularly at the Philippine Daily Inquirer where he explains economics and e-commerce concepts understandable to a layman. 

JANETTE TORAL

Ms Janette Toral has always pushed for e-commerce development in the Philippines since she founded the Philippine Internet Commerce Society on September 1997. She also played a very active part in lobbying for the passage of the Electronic Commerce Law in the Philippines.

She started her own E-commerce Research Portal last December 1999 with DigitalFilipino.com. She's also a freelance journalist since 1995 writing e-commerce and IT developments in the Philippines. She has written articles for international publications such as Business Online, asia.internet.com, and World Executive Digest.

Since September 1997 to the present, she has been frequently invited to various IT conferences in the country to talk about e-commerce developments in the Philippines.

As an IT practitioner, Ms Toral has more than 11 years of combined experience in the areas of training, management, sales, technical support, web development, event.

RENATO DE VILLA 

The Hon. Renato S. De Villa was an engineering student at the UST when decided to take the competitive exams for the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).  He later graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree at the said military institution and later on led a very distinguished career in the Philippine armed forces. 

As a military professional and defense leader, Sec. De Villa was among the first to be contracted by then PC/INP Chief, Gen Fidel Ramos for the EDSA People Power revolution in February 1986. 

With the restoration of democracy in the country, he rose in positions towards national level leadership capped by being appointed as the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in 1998.  He later on served as the Secretary of National Defense for two consecutive administrations – that of the Aquino and Ramos governments.