BACOLOD CITY, Negros Occidental—The last instruction Atty. Alexander Aznar gave his only son from his hospital bed was not about family, health, or succession. It was about work.
“What are you doing here? Get back to work,” he told 27-year-old Kyle Alexander Aznar, general manager of Aznar Shipping Corp., who dutifully followed his father’s directive, unaware it would be their last conversation.
A business management graduate of the University of Asia and the Pacific, Kyle had initially wanted to work for another company after graduation at 22. His father had other plans, bringing him into the family business to learn the ropes of the shipping and logistics company built by his grandfather, Manuel “Manoling” Aznar, after the family abandoned coal mining.
“He told me I could run the company the way I wanted when it is my time to take over. I didn’t know that day would come so quickly. I was only 27 when he died,” Kyle, now 31, told Context.ph over inasal and kansi at a known dining place in Bacolod City.
It took him a year to stabilize things at the company and get used to the job, eventually handing day to day operations to professional managers, allowing him to concentrate on overhauling and professionalizing the company.
His first order of business was putting the strucuree in place which meant setting up a family constitution and putting in place a professional board of directors. Accurate and timiely financial reporting then followed, he found, needed to catch up with the company he wanted to build. Decisions could no longer rest largely on gut feel.
“Numbers give you a better picture of how the business is doing,” he said, particularly when evaluating investments and managing daily operations. Even slowing a vessel by a knot, for instance, can generate meaningful fuel savings across the fleet.
The discipline appears to be paying off. Aznar Shipping posted net profit of P51 million in the first half, more than double that for the previous despite higher diesel and other costs.
Kyle also strengthened corporate governance, bringing respected executives into the boardroom. Previously, he recalled, board matters could be settled over dinner.
Nono Espelita, formerly president of Julie’s Bakeshop, now chairs the company. Kyle trusts him enough to have enlisted his help in drafting a family constitution, which makes clear that sharing the Aznar bloodline does not automatically qualify anyone for an executive post.
The governance overhaul is accompanying an expansion drive. The company has added four vessels over the past four years, with the latest, Manoling 7, opening a roll-on, roll-off link between Bacolod and Dumangas.
The vessel is technically the sixth in the Manoling series. The number four was skipped, a nod to Chinese superstition.
A planned initial public offering could raise as much as P737 million to finance additional RORO vessels and build the company’s own shipyard, potentially lowering operating costs while creating new business opportunities.
For Kyle, taking over the family business has meant more than keeping the ships sailing. It has meant changing how the company navigates, with professional management, financial discipline, and a succession plan that puts competence ahead of kinship.
