Enrique Razon Jr. has reached a milestone no Filipino had hit before. The ports magnate topped Forbes’ 2026 ranking of the 50 richest Filipinos with a net worth of $21.8 billion, which at an exchange rate of P60.75 to the dollar works out to about P1.32 trillion, making him the country’s first peso trillionaire.
The engine of that fortune is International Container Terminal Services Inc., the port operator Razon chairs and has spent years pushing into new markets around the world. Forbes credited exactly that global push for the jump, noting he was “unfazed by geopolitical tensions” as he accelerated the company’s expansion and lifted its share price.
The gap between Razon and the rest is striking. In second place, the Sy siblings, heirs to the SM founder Henry Sy Sr., are worth a combined $9.2 billion, less than half of Razon’s total. San Miguel’s Ramon Ang follows at $3.5 billion, then Puregold’s Lucio and Susan Co at $3.3 billion, and the Consunji construction family at $3 billion. The rest of the top ten runs through familiar names: Lucio Tan, Jaime Zobel de Ayala and family, the Que Azcona family behind Mercury Drug, Manny Villar and the Ty siblings of Metrobank.
What makes the list interesting is the backdrop. The combined wealth of the 50 richest Filipinos actually fell this year, to $79 billion from $86 billion, after the economy posted its weakest quarterly growth in the first three months of 2026. So the country minted its first trillionaire in the same year its billionaire class, taken as a whole, got poorer. One fortune tied to global ports climbed while fortunes tied more closely to the domestic economy stalled.
That contrast is the real leadership lesson buried in the ranking. Razon’s rise was built on looking outward and expanding abroad while much of the local business elite felt the drag of a slower home market. In a year when standing still meant slipping back, the person who pushed hardest into the rest of the world ended up alone at the top.
