Philippine National Bank, one of the nation’s largest privately owned commercial institutions, is a relative newcomer to the private wealth game, entering the field in late 2019.
But within just a few months, a once-in-a-century pandemic forced CEO Jose Arnulfo “Wick” Veloso and his staff to act fast with measures and new strategies for a fast-changing global economic world. That meant, of course, relying on PNB’s deep investment research resources for wealthy clients – and investing in new ones.
As the pandemic stretched from 2020 into 2021, the immediate challenge was figuring out the state of the Philippines’ gross domestic product, inflation, central bank policy rates and foreign exchange gyrations to provide macro investing guidance to clients.
Suddenly, analyzing the fundamentals of publicly listed companies on the Philippine Stock Exchange became more art than science as a bewildering array of global headwinds appeared. From January to December [2021], as many as 212 reports were published by PNB, under the stewardship of Alvin Joseph Arogo, vice president and head of research, covering economic and equity research and providing up-to-date investment ideas.
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