Past and Present

Casa Roxas   Ayala traces its roots to Casa Roxas, a business house established when Manila was little more than a small town and the Philippines was a remote archipelago of rural villages. Casa Roxas began as an institution based in agriculture and trading, and later developed into an important manufacturing and services concern. Its role in these sectors had profound and extensive impacts that over time would benefit other Philippine entrepreneurial groups.
Domingo Roxas and Antonio de Ayala   Destileria y Licoreria de Ayala y Compañia       In 1834, the founders of Casa Roxas—Domingo Roxas and Antonio de Ayala—opened a distillery that started small but grew to give high value-added to Philippine sugar, and was later known as Destileria y Licoreria de Ayala y Compañia.
In 1851, one of Roxas' heirs bought the Hacienda Makati, a tract of farmland outside Manila. This was to be the site of Ayala's landmark initiative in Philippine real estate development. There in the 1920s Ayala began a residential subdivision; in the 1930s it developed more subdivisions in other parts of Makati and in Manila.   Old Makati
Insular Life Assurance Company   Ayala's involvement in banking likewise started in 1851, when a Spanish royal decree created in Manila the first bank in Southeast Asia and Antonio de Ayala became a director. Over half a century later, that bank was renamed Bank of the Philippine Islands, which later, in what became known as the age of technology, pioneered electronic and Internet banking in the Philippines. In 1910, Ayala and several partners established the first Filipino life insurance firm, Insular Life Assurance Company. In 1933, it also established Filipinas Life Assurance Company—now named Ayala Life Assurance, Inc.
Many of Ayala's groundbreaking enterprises remain today as leaders in their respective fields—some outside the Ayala group, including the very first one, the distillery, which operates as Ginebra San Miguel Inc., and the streetcar system that was later acquired by American-owned Manila Electric, Rail and Light Co., which today is the Philippines' biggest power distributor and is still known by its old acronym, MERALCO.   Tranvias de Filipinas Jardinera
To learn more about Ayala’s rich history, you can browse the Ayala Interactive Timeline.

Ayala Timeline

For 175 years, Ayala has prospered as an innovative Filipino business house.

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