!!!!!Billion Dollar Bicolana Loida Nicolas Lewis -wealthiest Filipino in North America

[Clyde Adkins]

Billion Dollar Bicolana

By Leonor Aureus-Briscoe

Loida Nicolas Lewis -wealthiest Filipino in North America

As America's top woman business owner, she is Imelda Marcos without
the shoes and
Corazon Aquino without the coups.

On January 19, 1993, Reginald F. Lewis lay dying of brain cancer on a
Manhattan hospital bed.
As his pulse started to fade, his Philippine-born wife, Loida Nicolas
Lewis, softly intoned the
comforting words of the 23rd Psalm as family members gathered close,
stunned with grief.

"The Lord is my shephered, I shall not want." Reaching the end,
"Surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house
of the Lord forever," Loida
turned to her husband for the last time. "Go now, my darling. I love
you," she whispered.

That gentle send-off, recalled in Reginald F. Lewis's biography by
Robert S. Blair, Why should
White Guys Have All The Fun? reflects the deep religious faith of the
widow who has probably
become the best known and certainly the wealthiest Filipino in
America. She calls to mind two
other well-known Philippine widows who were forced to carry on the
formidable legacy of their
charismatic husbands. As America's top woman business owner, Loida
Nicolas Lewis is Imelda
Marcos without all those shoes and Corazon Aquino without all the
coups.

In 24 years of marriage, Reginald and Loida Lewis had gained wealth
beyond the imagination of
any black man from the slums of Baltimore, or any Philippine girl from
the impoverished southern
tip of Luzon, even one from a prominent family. At the time of his
death at 50, Reginald left a
personal fortune estimated at $400 million dollars and a vast European
food empire, TLC
Beatrice International, with sales of more than $1 billion a year.

The company is the biggest black-owned company in America. With
headquarters overlooking
New York City's Central Park, TLC Beatrice has operations in France,
Spain, Portugal, Ireland,
Belgium, Germany and the Canary Islands.

Less than two years after Reginald's untimely death, his widow has
reason to be proud of what
she has done with her husband's legacy. After a year of mourning
following Philippine Catholic
tradition, she took over a company that had languished under the
control of Reginald's half
brother, Jean Fugett Jr..

Early last year, Loida became chief executive officer and chairman of
TLC Beatrice and
immediately began to turn the corporation back on the path her husband
had set.

But with a difference.

She sold the company jet for $14 million, got rid of the company
limousines and moved out of an
office The New York Times described as "a Hollywood vision of
corporate grandeur', with
Persian rug, gigantic desk and humidor of Monte Cristo cigars.

There's nothing opulent or spectacular about TLC Beatrice's New York
headquarters now on the
39th floor of 9 West and 57th, unless it's the way the elegant Plaza
Hotel across the street, with
its ornate architectural splendor, is reflected on the glass exterior
of the building. Now that a
housewife - described by her flamboyant husband as "the least
materialistic person I have ever
met" - is running the show, the almost spartan office furnishings have
been chosen with an eye to
function rather than dazzle.

Loida's office is the only room commanding a breath-taking view of
Central Park and New York
City's skyline. The new CEO's small desk in one corner with its modest
clutter roof paper and
paraphernalia, reflects her understated style. A poster of Reginald
smiles down at her from the
cover of his recently-released biography, reminding her of yet one
more of his admonitions: "You
don't make money with money; you make it with your brains." She has
other photos, as well, of
happier times with Reginald and their two daughters, Leslie, who just
graduated cum laude from
Harvard, and Christina, a high school sophomore in New York.

When Loida took over, the company's earnings were down, forcing her to
downsize the New
York staff of 50 to about 14 - one of the "toughest decisions I had to
make". From her offices in
New York and Paris, Loida directs a company with 16 subsidiaries and
4,500 employees mostly
in Europe. Her company is the leading wholesale distributor of food
and grocery products in
Paris, with 420 Franprix supermarkets and 170 Leader Price outlets.
She is the major ice cream
manufacturer in Spain. Her products carry the Menorquina name in
Spain, Kalise in the Canary
Islands and Arctic in France, Belgium and Germany. And she's the top
manufacturer of potato
chips in Ireland.

Standing tall on center stage at a recent glittering gala event at the
Capital Hilton in Washington,
D.C., honoring America's top 50 women business owners, Loida
graciously acknowledged the
crowd's standing ovation. She not only made the top 50 list of the
first time this year. She made
Number One. America's leading TV news commentators, from the venerable
Walter Cronkite to
the glamourous Diane Sawyer, paid tribute to the honoree's vision,
courage, and imagination, as
well as pioneering spirit, capacity for hard work, tenacity to
succeed, and determination to break
all barriers, to become exemplars to feminine power.

But the Philippine-trained lawyer from Sorsogon did something
very-un-feminist; she gave credit
to her late husband without whose "vision, hard work and
determination, there would be no TLC
Beatrice". She also credited her employees, two daughters, and
extended family, a mix of black
and Filipino Americans. But most of all, she credited "the Lord, my
God." And "to all women
everywhere", Loida had one message: "As I have done...take control of
your life, take
responsibility for yourself and your family; pay your way, and you can
do it."

The pronounced, lilting Filipino accent, the gracious, diffident
manner, as well as the biblical
quotes and simple, housewifely formulas for solving problems often
cause raised eyebrows. Wall
Street executives, especially, bemoan her lack of an MBA and formal
preparation to fill her
husband's extra-large shoes as head of a complex international
business.

"There's really no preparation" for life's surprising turns, Loida
says during an interview in her
multi-million dollar two-level, 15-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. But
she points out: "My own
family background is business. I am familiar with wheeling and
dealing. I heard my father make
deals all the time. For 24 years, I lived with my husband and listened
attentively when he talked."

She was born 52 years ago, the eldest of five children, to Francisco
Nicolas and Magdalena
Ma$alac in Sorsogon. Her parents were "very entrepreneurial". The
family owned "NicFur" (for
Nicolas Furniture), a successful furniture and lumber business, as
well as a string of movie
theaters. NicFur at one time was the only serious competition to the
furniture business of the
Puyats - a name associated with enormous wealth and vast business
holdings in the Philippines.

In the U.P. College of Law, the Philippines' equivalent of Harvard
University, Loida "learned to
work and deal with men in a field dominated by men." Some U.P.
contemporaries remember her
as a student leader, active in the Portia Society, the women's
debating society of the U.P. College
of Law. One acquaintance called her "a freedom fighter," in the
tradition of strong Philippine
women who are "mayumi" (feminine) and fragile on the outside, but who
will not hesitate "to stand up for their rights and fight back if you
push them against the wall or step on their toes." Loida
graduated in the top 10 of her class in U.P.

This unique blend of intellect and spirituality, East and West,
province and city, magnolia and steel
is what fascinated Reginald F. Lewis, fresh out of Harvard Law School,
at age 26. They met on a
blind date in New York while she was on a world tour, a present from
her father after she passed
the Philippine bar exams. She found Reginald "masterful .. nothing
like any man I had ever met".
He found her his "equal", the embodiment of the woman he wanted who
"would grow with me"
and nurture his driving ambition to be the best.

After a six month courtship, Reginald flew to the Philippines to claim
his bride on August 19,
1969. The grand wedding in Paco Church was publicized in the Manila
papers and had Vice
President Fernando Lopez as one of the principal sponsors. Despite the
racist attitude of some
Filipinos towards blacks, Loida says her family had no problem with
Reginald's race. She says
simply, "My parents did not raise us to look at people by the accident
of their skin or economic
status."

During the marital law years, from 1971 to 1979, while raising a
family in New York, Loida
published a magazine called Ningas Cogon. The title is taken from a
phrase often used to indict
the Filipinos' penchant for starting something in a burst of interest,
then dying down to nothing.
The venture was financed by Reginald. Back in Manila, Loida's younger
sister, Imelda Nicolas,
started an underground paper. Characteristic of their sense of
political satire, the sisters toyed
with the title, "Ferdie's Organ," before finally settling on "Imelda's
Monthly". An art history
masters graduate of Columbia University, Imelda worked for Presidents
Cory Aquino and Fidel
Ramos as executive assistant, prior to joining TLC Beatrice as Loida's
executive assistant.

Two months after Reginald died, on a day she noted in Paris as the
Feast of St. Joseph, she
finished How to Get a Green Card, a revised, more comprehensive
version of an earlier book she
wrote, 101 Legal Ways to Stay in the U.S.A., based on her 11 years as
a U.S. government
immigration lawyer. The how-to-book was her lawyerly reaction to the
humiliation she never
forgot when she was detained by U.S. immigration authorities for 45
minutes during a honeymoon
stopover in Hawaii. (She exacted her vengeance in 1979 when she was
paid three years back
wages after winning a protracted discrimination lawsuit against the
INS). Completed in Paris, the
book is dedicated to Reginald, "husband, lover, counselor, friend,
role model, and father to our
children."

A month later, in April, she traveled to Harvard University with her
daughters for the dedication
of the Reginald F. Lewis Center for International Studies. Made
possible by a $3-million grant
from Lewis. At the time, it was the largest given to Harvard by a
single individual and it resulted in
the first Harvard building to be named after a black American.

Asked what formula she had for women who want to replicate her success
at turning a
floundering business around, she said: "I don't want to make too much
of it. You apply the same
principles you live by as a housewife running a household, but instead
of three zeros, there are
eight zeros. You have a certain income and certain expenses. It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to
figure out that if your expenses far exceed your income, you're not
going to make it."

As a young girl growing up in Bicol, did she ever dream that Loida
Nicolas would be where she
is today? She laughs and recalls her first arrival in U.S. "What's
funny was that when my mother
and I arrived in New York to pick up my sister Imelda, who was
studying at Columbia Univ.,
and we were all together, my mother said, 'all right, watch out United
States! Here come the
Nicolases!' She did; she said that."

But did Loida really believe she could reach the stars in America?

She shakes her head vigorously. Her voice is almost inaudible. "Never,
never."
Reprinted with permission from Filipinos in Europe, a London (England)
magazine.