Cerberus Capital Management is looking to expand its Philippine investments after turning around the former Hanjin shipyard in Subic, where investments by the US firm and its tenants have reached USD500 million and created about 6,000 jobs.
Greg Metro, managing director of Cerberus Middle East Management Ltd., said the investment firm is already applying lessons from the Agila industrial facility to another potential Philippine transaction that has been in development for two years.
“We have now successfully turned it around. The investment between us and our tenants, $500 million, 6,000 jobs have been created,” Metro said. “It’s amazing to see the turnaround that’s occurred from 2022.”
Cerberus acquired the distressed shipyard in 2022 after a three-year process that Metro described as the largest bankruptcy case in the Philippines.
Rather than retain the site as a single-use shipbuilding facility, Cerberus repositioned it as a multi-use industrial complex serving government and private-sector tenants.
Metro said patience was one of the biggest lessons from the transaction, along with building relationships with the Philippine and US governments and private-sector stakeholders.
“It took us three years to close that deal, and it was incredibly complex. But it was worth that investment of time,” he said.
He said cooperation among government agencies, banks, and other stakeholders helped resolve bankruptcy, legal, and tax-incentive issues, offering lessons that could be applied to future investments linked to the Luzon Economic Corridor.
Metro described Agila as a strong first investment experience for Cerberus in the Philippines and signaled that the firm is looking for more opportunities.
“It was a very good first investment experience that we had,” he said, adding that Cerberus is “looking forward [to] more of this in the months” ahead.
