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The Zóbel de Ayala clan is an affluent Filipino business family with ancestry from the Philippines, and northern Spain’s mountainous region of Álava descending from the lineage of Juan Larrazábal Ayala (circa 1475), an influential landowner. Patriarch Antonio de Ayala sailed for Manila in the 1800s and established an industrial partnership with Domingo Roxas, a descendant of Mexican immigrant Antonio Fernández de Roxas of Acapulco, who migrated to the Philippines in 1695, and later with Dr. Johannes Andreas Zobel, a German pharmacist from Hamburg who settled in Manila in 1832.
The clan has been residing in the Philippines for more than 20 generations. Historically, the family has been well-known for their socio-economic and cultural contributions to the country such as the pioneering of Manila's first rail system in the 1900s, establishing the oldest existing financial institution in Southeast Asia, as well as the construction of the first steel bridges in the Philippines. They are also the first family to have a private plane in the Philippines named Prima Zobelina.
The Zóbel de Ayalas own and control the Ayala Corporation, the country's largest and oldest conglomerate that includes the Bank of the Philippine Islands, Ayala Land Inc., the Manila Water Company, and Globe Telecom, one of the largest mobile phone networks in the Philippines. The Ayala Corporation was also responsible for developing large areas of Makati City into residential subdivisions (gated communities) between the 1940s and 1960s. These subdivisions include Forbes Park, Dasmariñas Village, Bel-Air Village, San Lorenzo Village, Urdaneta Village and Magallanes Village. In addition, Ayala Corporation later developed the center of Makati into a mixed-use industrial development now known as the Ayala Center and its surrounding throughfares (Ayala Avenue, Makati Avenue, Paseo de Roxas & Sen. Gil Puyat Ave.), which now comprise the Makati skyline. In 2001, the family acquired the 54-hectare Fort Bonifacio Global City development in Metro Manila. Other industrial and real estate developments also exist in other parts of Luzon and Cebu including several international partnerships in banking, construction and Information Technology.
The De La Salle-Santiago Zóbel School was named after Jacobo Santiago Zóbel (1954-1965), the eldest son of Enrique Zobel. The Primo Zobel Award has been annually given by the family for the past eighty years in recognition to outstanding citizens who propagate the intellectual development of the country. The prestigious Ayala Foundation has been assisting the country's struggling cultural heritage and development for many years.
The Zobel de Ayala siblings is among the three Filipino families included in the Forbes magazine's list of the World's Richest families.[1]
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Harvard Alumni Achievement Award
The Zobel de Ayala clan has the two and only Filipino receivers of the Harvard Alumni Achievement Award, Ayala Corp. chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala was conferred the Harvard Business School’s highest honor, the Alumni Achievement Award, by Dean Jay Light. Two years later his younger sister, Dr. Patrisha Zobel de Ayala was awarded by Harvard Medical School the same achievement in her area of expertise.[2] They are the only Filipinos to receive this prestigious award. Dr. Zobel de Ayala is the first doctor to have major in almost all different areas of medicine.[2]
Language
Most of the members of the Zobel de Ayala Family are or have been polyglots, being traditionally spanish and more recently english ( with some exceptions like the Padilla-Zobel de Ayala branch) their mother language.
Known Family members
References
- ^ The World's Richest People, Forbes magazine, 2007, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/10/07billionaires_The-Worlds-Billionaires_CountryOfCitizen_13.html, retrieved 2007-10-12
- ^ a b Abs-Cbn Interactive, JAZA and Patrisha receives Harvard alumni award
External links
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