Ricardo Buerom Yanson legacy – 3

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. There are three common legacies: wealth, love and respect and family honor, and pain and suffering. Of the first kind, the legacy is dissipated with disunity; of the second the legacy is passed on with joy and pride; of the third, it is best forgotten.

American preacher Billy Graham has this to say about legacy: The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith. Author Shannon L. Alder has advice about legacy, “carve your name on hearts, not tombstone. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”

It is popularly known that Ricardo B. Yanson left a legacy of billions of pesos that is increasing by the day. However, after reading, dissecting and writing about the Family Constitution last year, I believe that the billions he left behind was not the primary legacy that he wanted to leave behind, but rather the philosophy of life and the principles of good business practices that he desired to be carved in the hearts and minds of his children and their children’s children.

From the Family Constitution that he asked his wife Olivia and his children to sign, he believed that he had already etched into them the legacy he needed to be preserved. It was not the billions but the family. Indeed, family harmony was his main goal because without that harmony, the billions he accumulated all his life and the businesses he established would be lost.

Once gone, his legacy would be just a name in a tombstone and the stories in the future of how a great fortune was debauched and thrown into the wind. Thus, he ensured that the day will never come. In this Ricardo B. Yanson was wise, instinctive, and prophetic.

Was this also the fate of his forbears? Did he know how the landed Yansons of Valladolid lost their share of the land? Perhaps, but no matter. On his own, he wanted that the financial and business empire he built with his wife Olivia will not crumble into dust like the hanging gardens of Babylon. I believe he anticipated that possibility, the reason that he had put into writing and legal documents the mechanism to prevent a disaster. He did two things.

First, he divested himself and Olivia from Vallacar Transit Corporation, the financial base of his family, and second, he formalized the Family Constitution that embodied the principles that would guide the family when he was gone.

At the core and essence of these two moves is the family. He wanted it united and in harmony down through the generations. Indeed, he was astute and foresighted. I think that he had also the premonition that the possibility of a family feud was high. He feared that once the family is broken so will the wealth, he devoted his life to build, will shatter. When that happens, Ricardo will just be another name carved on a tombstone. He did not want disharmony to happen to his family.

Olivia probably shares this fear, the reason I think she consented to the divestment and the Family Constitution. On September 21 last year interview by Manila Standard Business that I quoted earlier, Olivia reminded her children about the sacrifice and the hardship that they went through as a family before the success of their business split them into warring factions.

“You, my dear children, are the living stewards of the family business for the next generations,” she said.

She echoed the philosophy and the foresight of Ricardo in the imperatives of preserving Ricardo’s legacy and, like a pledge to their father, the children agreed to the divestment that equitably and legally entrusted to them the stewardship of the family wealth and to abide by the principles that their father laid out to guide them.

Olivia’s interview was made at the height of the family feud and rightly did she remind the children of their stewardship. She had agreed not to be entrusted as one of the stewards. Was it only because Ricardo was still alive but to be reneged later?

“Aye”, to quote the ill-fated Hamlet, “there’s the rub!”

Continued tomorrow.