The Lawyer As Manager

Andres Bautista is full of surprises. The first surprise comes when you read his resumé and wonder what an expert on constitutional law, a law school professor and dean is doing running a company whose business interests include an upscale shopping mall, two high-end resorts, two five-star hotels, a business hotel, two exclusive residential condominiums, and a prime commercial building.

The second surprise comes when you actually meet the man, and instead of a white-haired, bespectacled nerd of a legalist you find, sitting across the desk from you, an amiable and charming man, dressed casually for a Saturday at work in a grey short-sleeved sports shirt. He gamely poses for the photographer, walking up and down idle escalators in the deserted mall an hour before it opens, and offers a decaf espresso: "It’s really good," he tempts—and it is.

Andy Bautista assumed the position of chief executive officer of the Kuok Group of companies in the Philippines last September. "The joke is that the company’s still standing," he says, laughing easily. His first five months on the job have been "challenging... a big learning curve."

He describes his role as more of an overseer than a manager, since the various enterprises have their own general managers and property managers. Under his care are the two Shangri-La hotels (Makati and Edsa), the Mactan Shangri-La resort in Cebu where the ASEAN summit was held last month, the Traders Hotel on Roxas Blvd., the Shangri-La Plaza Mall, the soon to be completed Shang Grand Tower and the St. Francis residential condominiums, the Enterprise Center along Ayala Avenue in Makati, and the Shangri-La resort in Boracay which will be completed in the third quarter of 2008.

"My role is to ensure that there is synergy among the various components of the properties," he explains, adding that "the theme for 2007 in the Kuok Group is to create more synergy among the group properties." That includes 49 Shangri-La hotels worldwide ("that number will double in the next five years," Bautista shares) and extensive property holdings all over the world, particularly in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The Kuok family also owns the South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong.

Bautista is a lawyer by profession, a member of the Philippine and New York bars with a law degree from the Ateneo (he graduated top of his class and was managing editor of the Ateneo Law Review) and a master’s degree from Harvard University (where he was president of the law student council).

Not surprisingly he was hired right out of graduate school in 1993 by a top law firm in New York, specializing in project finance, mergers and acquisitions. He moved to the firm’s Hong Kong office and much closer to home in 1996.

In January 2001 he set up Anglo Oriental Consulting Ltd. in Manila, which acted as the country representative for the international law firm Allen & Overy, with offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. Shuttling between the three Asian cities, Bautista provided legal consulting services in all aspects of international corporate, capital markets and infrastructure financing.

Opportunity has a way of seeking out those who are ready for a change, even if they may not know or acknowledge it. Bautista now admits that, although his career path was on solid ground, he had "meaning issues: the pay was good but we were just drafting documents all the time," he says. "After a certain point, a contract is a contract."

In June last year, Tom Zita, then CEO of the Kuok Group Philippines and Bautista’s neighbor (they live in the same condominium complex), called him and said he was retiring and would Bautista consider taking his job.

"My first question was, what is your job?" he laughs. "I knew he was with Shang, but nothing specific about what his job was." Zita convinced him to at least go for an interview—which he did, with Edward Kuok, at the Makati Shangri-La.

"My slot was from 12:45 to one o’clock," he recalls. It turns out that he was one of many interviewed that day, at 15 minute intervals. "It’s like a beauty contest," he adds.

A couple of days later he got another call from Zita, telling him he was on the final list and would he fly to Hong Kong to meet with Robert Kuok, the group’s legendary 83-year-old founder and chairman.

Bautista shares that "at the back of my mind, I thought that the Kuoks could be good clients" for his law firm, should the interview not result in a job offer. When he went in to the meeting, the first thing the patriarch said to him was, "In life, we are all given yokes to bear; the trick is we must bear them with grace." Bautista was surprised, to say the least, but was even more surprised when he was given the job.

"I told them I have a contract with my law firm and a 9-month notice period," he relates, "and I’d better call my wife!" Both his law firm and his wife—Tisha Cruz, who runs the make-up school of Frank Provost salons as well as a school training housekeepers—gave their blessings, and three months later, Andy Bautista was holding office at the fifth floor of the Shangri-La Plaza Mall.

It’s a bit schizophrenic," Andy Bautista laughs when asked about his dual role as CEO of the Kuok Group and dean of the Far Eastern University Institute of Law. He has held the deanship since 1999, and has been a lecturer on constitutional law even before that. His interest in the fundamental law of the land started in school but, he explains, "you have to be realistic: there’s no practice in constitutional law." So he "re-invented" himself and went into corporate law.

Just before going to Harvard, Bautista worked as spokesman and legal counsel in former Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan’s 1992 campaign—first for the presidency and then "he had to slide down to vice president, but then he came up against Erap..." with obvious results. That stint taught him a few lessons about our electoral system, one of which was, in the late Chief Justice’s words, "If you want to become president, just go into movie acting," a fact most people know only too well.

But Bautista holds out some hope: "It’s not as simple as it used to be," he says. "Now, because of technology—TV, radio, the Internet—there’s more information, so it’s not (a sure thing) that if you’re popular you get elected. The voters are more mature, more discriminating... we just have to be a bit more patient."

He stresses the importance of an informed electorate: "We’ve got to tell them the pros and cons in a simple way, and let them decide."

Running for public office is not something he is considering. "If you want to help out, there are other ways," this 42-year-old father of three boys says. "Teaching, for example, is a real vocation, and if you do it well, you can really make a difference."

Despite the demands of his new position, Bautista continues his involvement in law education, since it’s night school and his constitutional law class is held on Saturday afternoons. "It helps me keep in touch," he says, "and it’s a discipline—you have to keep studying."

Law education, like other things, has evolved, or should evolve. Rather than just knowing all the laws, he stresses critical thinking—"not just accepting things as they are, but questioning: do they make sense?" He also says that budding lawyers must learn not just the right skills but also the right values, because "skillful lawyers without the right values can inflict a lot of damage." And lawyers must also come out of school with what he calls "real world skills" to be able to apply their legal skills to actual situations.

Toward this end, Bautista has set up a pioneering program that combines a law degree and an MBA (masters in business administration) in a five-year dual degree program run jointly by De La Salle and Far Eastern University. Bautista is dean of the law program. It is the first in the country, patterned after successful models in Europe and the U.S.

He believes that the program will produce better lawyers, and better managers, who will in practice run businesses—or even local governments, for example—much more effectively.

In his simple office tucked away in the mall, accessed by a fingerprint recognition security system, it seems almost incongruous to talk about as contentious and gritty an issue as constitutional change. But Bautista, after all, is a constitutional expert, so we had to ask.

Yes, he is in favor of constitutional change, "but it has to be done in the right way." He favors a constitutional convention, but with certain limitations. For one, its members must not be totally elected to "ensure that it’s not just a replication of Congress," but should include appointed economists, academics and other experts.

To counter the issue of runaway cost, he recommends a fixed term for the convention, so that members do not dilly dally with endless debates, as they did in 1971 "when it took two years to frame one paragraph because they were always arguing."

While a constituent assembly (con-ass) may seem more efficient, "there is really a distrust of Congress...we do not see them rising above their own interests to push the national interest..." He cites the issue of political dynasties: "It is in the (1971) Constitution, but 20 years later there’s still no law because Congress doesn’t want to act on it."

He is open to a shift to the parliamentary system, but again cautions that it must be "studied (and) not rammed through." We have a presidential system that is unique among our neighbors in Asia because of the American experience in our history. "But we have to ask: is it appropriate in the first place, given our culture, history and values?" he points out.

It is indeed a bit schizophrenic when our interview shifts between property developments and constitutional provisions and back again. But the shift in this case is quite effortless, and it is all due to the man who is as much a lawyer as he is a manager—and vice versa.