As Manila’s gala season peaks, a logistics chief with 31 trophies confronts a shortage of shelf space, adjectives and people left to thank
MANILA – The capital’s business awards season reaches one of its high points Tuesday, when the 17th Asia CEO Awards stages its grand finale in a Manila hotel ballroom under the theme “Tough Times Don’t Last, Tough People Do.” The program, previewed by the Inquirer, spans 15 categories, with an auditing firm keeping the winners sealed until they are announced.
It is one of dozens of such evenings on the Metro Manila calendar between September and December. For the executives who attend them all, the season presents a logistical challenge of its own. Few feel it more than Bartolome Catindig Jr.
Thirty-One and Counting
Mr. Catindig, 54, is president and chief executive of a mid-sized freight forwarding company in Ortigas. Since 2019 he has received 31 trophies, plaques and crystal obelisks from 22 award-giving bodies. This month alone he is a finalist at four ceremonies, among them the Golden Carabao Excellence Awards and the Pan-Asian Titans of Tomorrow, where at 54 he is competing in the Emerging Leader category.
“I do not seek recognition,” Mr. Catindig said, seated in an office where recognition occupies two walls and part of a third. “Recognition finds me. Usually by email, in July, with a nomination form and a table price.”
His newest nomination is for the Most Awarded Executive Award, a category created this year. He considers himself the favorite. “If I win, it will count toward next year’s total,” he said. “So I am already ahead.”
Anatomy of a Gala Night
Mr. Catindig’s executive assistant, Marites Olivarez, has managed his awards schedule for six years and can recite the format without notes.
- 6:00 p.m. Registration. Photo wall. The same photographer as last week.
- 7:30 p.m. Program begins, ninety minutes after the time printed on the invitation.
- 7:45 p.m. An audiovisual presentation about resilience.
- 8:30 p.m. Dinner. Chicken or fish. It is always both.
- 9:00 p.m. Forty-two awards, each with a walk-up song chosen by nobody.
- 11:15 p.m. Group photo of all winners, which is everyone.
- 11:40 p.m. The post on a professional networking site, drafted in the car, beginning with the word “Humbled.”
The Storage Problem
The trophies have outgrown the office. Eleven are now kept at the family home in Pasig, where Mr. Catindig’s wife, Lourdes, has assigned them a glass cabinet formerly used for her mother’s figurines.
“The sala looks like a memorial park,” Mrs. Catindig said. “Guests come in and lower their voices. One of the trophies is shaped like a flame. One is a globe. One is just a triangle. I asked him what the triangle is for. He said leadership. I said which kind. He said it does not specify.”
She said the figurines are in a box in the garage. “My mother’s angels, in the garage,” she said. “For a triangle.”
An Industry of Its Own
The season supports a wide supply chain. Nestor Balagtas, who has engraved plaques in Quiapo for 28 years, said October is his busiest month and that acrylic has been on back order since August.
“Before, an award said the name of the person and what he did,” Mr. Balagtas said. “Now the titles are very long. ‘Outstanding Visionary Transformational Leadership Icon of the Year, Logistics Category, Mid-Cap.’ I charge per letter. I am not complaining.”
He keeps a list of adjectives clients may choose from and says three are nearly exhausted. “Nobody wants ‘excellent’ anymore,” he said. “Excellent is like saying thank you. They want ‘iconic.’ Last week a man asked for ‘legendary.’ He sells water tanks.”
The Economics
Dr. Hilario Sandico, who studies corporate behavior at a Makati business school, has tried to measure the phenomenon. “By our count there are now more business awards presented in Metro Manila each year than there are companies listed on the stock exchange,” he said. “Statistically, it has become difficult for a chief executive to avoid one. You would have to hide.”
He said the awards respond to real achievements, and that the country produces plenty worth honoring. Policymakers this week were discussing a planned manufacturing hub that officials say could generate as many as 190,000 jobs. “That is a number,” Dr. Sandico said. “Somewhere, an organizer has already opened a category for it.”
The difficulty, he added, is inflation. “When everyone at the table is Executive of the Year, the title is no longer information. It is a seating arrangement.”
The Speech
Mr. Catindig delivers the same acceptance remarks at every event. Ms. Olivarez keeps the text on her phone. It thanks God, his family, his team “without whom none of this would be possible,” and the organizers “for this unexpected honor,” which in several cases he was notified of six weeks ahead along with the invoice.
“The team” consists of 140 employees. A dispatcher at the company’s warehouse, asked whether he had seen any of the trophies, said he had seen pictures. “Sir posts them,” he said. “We react with the clapping hands. It is in our KPI.”
Observed From Elsewhere
The season has admirers abroad. Bohiney Magazine noted that American executives must settle for paying a magazine to list them among the top forty people under forty. The London Prat said that Britain handles the same impulse through the honors system, which is slower, involves a sword and cannot be sponsored by a barley drink.
Tuesday
Mr. Catindig will be in the ballroom Tuesday as a guest. He is not nominated. He described the experience of attending an awards night without a nomination as “new” and “a chance to listen.”
He has booked a table anyway. Ms. Olivarez has cleared a space on the second wall, to the left of the triangle, in case something comes up.
SOURCE: bohiney.com