DDB appoints new finance, IT head

MANILA, Philippines - DDB Philippines, one of the country’s most recognized multinational marketing communications agencies, recently announced the appointment of Percival S. Mijares, CPA, a chairman of its finance, compensation, and IT committee.

Mijares started his sterling career with SyCip, Gorres, Velayo & Co, CPA’s audit department. He migrated to New York where he held functions in controllership, human resource management, finance, taxation, treasury and corporate planning, rationalization and re-organization.

In New York, he was a divisional controller for Norton Simon, a Fortune 150 group company; a vice president for United Distillers Group/Diageo; a divisional CFO for Sunbelt-Charmer Group; and a CFO/chief information officer for W.J. Deutsch & Sons.

Since 2002, Mijares has been practicing as an independent CFO/CIO/HR consultant. His client roster spans the fields of fashion, distribution, real estate, advertising, and medicine, and places like New York, California, Quingdao, Manila and Cape Town.

All his client companies have experienced exponential growth during his tenure but he refuses to credit himself for their success, instead emphasizing the importance of setting up a stable system entrusted to competent, loyal and highly motivated employees.

“The common denominator is not me but having an entrepreneur who actualizes his vision as he is freed-up from worrying about the back office functions.”

Mijares prefers to work with current employees and adds: “Business is not rocket science. Given time, anybody with the right attitude and common sense can be taught the processes and decision patterns. Teaching loyalty, however, takes longer, if at all possible.”

When asked what he hopes to accomplish at DDB Philippines, Mijares said: “I hope to set up an IT structure and a financial organization that can run with minimal or no supervision to free-up the executive team to pursue prospects for growth and expansion. This will greatly enhance the DDB’s ability to harness its resources and the rich opportunities facing it now. This engagement reminds me of another company that was faced with a possibility to increase its volume by 50 percent in a matter of few weeks. Their executive team was hesitant to take the offer as they didn’t think that the logistics team can deliver. I persisted and the rest is history.”

Gil Chua, chairman and CEO of DDB Philippines, is determined that DDB takes the same game-changing leap. “As a brand and as a company, DDB has always been committed to encouraging a culture of freedom for our creative talents. It’s high time we gave management the same wings. Optimizing our systems and untying the knots there allows us to pour our strength and passion as an organization outward, allows management to shift into high gear and robustly execute a more ambitious vision for the company. When an organization already bursting with drive and talent is liberated, the result will be nothing short of revolutionary. We welcome Percy’s contribution to this goal.”