Lucio Tan is always in a hurry. He bought a helicopter in 1968 to be able to move quickly when visiting his factories – making him one of the first Filipino businessmen to own one.

At the office, he attends up to seven meetings simultaneously – associates see him as a blur moving from one room to another.

It's a trait that has served Mr Tan very well, catapulting him from struggling working student in the late 1950s to being the country's second-richest man just five decades later. Today, with a net worth of $1.7bn, according to Forbes magazine, he is wealthier than any of the scions of the elite Spanish families whose companies are now more than a hundred years old, or most of the ethnic Chinese merchants who began to build their businesses right after the second world war.