PLDT has finally acquired a large parcel of land for its campus-style headquarters in the 244-hectare Filinvest City in Alabang, the central business district of Muntinlupa City, CoverStory.ph has learned. 

The acquisition of the property ended years of on-again, off-again negotiations between PLDT and Filinvest Alabang Inc. (FAI) of the Gotianun family.

Currently, the publicly listed telco is headquartered at the 43-year-old Ramon Cojuangco Building in Makati City, the country’s financial district. 

PLDT’s newly acquired land is located in the largely forested section of Southgate District, which is just across from Far Eastern University (FEU) Alabang, Bloc 10 Lifestyle Community Center, and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. 

Two weeks ago, signages that read “private property” and “no entry” were put up at the site, which has a hilly outcrop, tall trees and thick foliage.

As a result, people are now barred from using the mountain bike trail on the property at the Corporate Woods Loop, reducing the nine-kilometer MTB trail that Filinvest City has touted as among the attractions of the central business district in the southernmost city of Metro Manila. 

Asked on March 11 who had put up the signages, a guard manning the gate of an access road to Filinvest City near the site said: “PLDT.”

The acquisition of the land is a culmination of PLDT’s decadelong quest to find a suitable location for its new headquarters. As early as 2014, the country’s largest and most diversified telco was reported to be considering Alabang and Sta. Rosa, Laguna, for the purpose. 

Similar to Google HQ

PLDT chair Manuel V. Pangilinan said at the time that the company was looking at a 5- to 10-hectare land in Filinvest City, as it was no longer interested in the purchase of Alphaland Corp.’s office building in Makati.

He was quoted as saying that the new headquarters would be similar to those built by Google and Facebook in the United States. “The traditional model is you functionalize [offices], you assign different areas for finance, marketing, sales, admin departments. That’s why you build buildings and assign floors [for each department], but the interaction is different,’’ he said.

Pangilinan said Apple’s headquarters building in Cupertino, California, was shaped like a big circular pie to force its employees “to dialogue with each other and work with each other—pretty much open and free.” 

In 2016, the PLDT chair said the company would spend about P10 billion over the next three years to transfer its Makati headquarters to Filinvest City. The plan did not come to fruition.

But the land deal with FAI is a step closer to PLDT’s achieving its goal of building a campus-style headquarters.

Biggest parcel of land

Before the transaction, the property in Southgate District was the biggest parcel of land still available in Filinvest City.

The property is bounded by South Luzon Expressway (SLEx) and Skyway to the east, Filinvest Avenue to the north, Corporate Avenue to the west, and a private subdivision to the south.

It is only 235 meters to Asian Hospital and Medical Center as the crow flies. The medical facility is owned by Metro Pacific, a significant shareholder of PLDT.

PLDT earned a net income of P32.36 billion in 2024, up 21% from P26.68 billion in 2023. As of Dec. 31, 2024, it had 14, 904 employees, down by about 4,000 from 2020.

Besides its open spaces and greenery, accessibility is one of the advantages of Filinvest City. 

It can be reached via SLEx and Metro Skyway (both of which have entry and exit points at the central business district), Alabang-Zapote Road, the old national highway, and Daang Hari Road.

Ninoy Aquino International Airport is just 10 km away. 

A transport hub for buses and UV Express, which can ferry commuters to towns and cities in the neighboring provinces of Laguna and Cavite and beyond, is found in Filinvest City, a former stock farm of the Department of Agriculture and the site of the Department of Health’s Serum and Vaccine Laboratory. 

‘Biggest joint-venture project’

Three decades ago, the government offered 244 hectares of mostly grazing land for joint development with the private sector to raise funds. 

Filinvest Corp. of Chinese Filipino businessman Andrew Gotianun was chosen in 1991 by the Public Estates Authority to be its partner in what was then called “the biggest joint-venture project of the government and the private sector.” 

Filinvest bested Ayala Land Inc. and Robinson’s Land of the Gokongweis for the right to develop the prime property adjacent to Ayala Alabang Village. 

By 2012, the Gotianuns had sunk nearly P20 billion in Filinvest City. 

Today it boasts IT and BPO companies, hotels, serviced apartments, malls, supermarkets, hospitals, office and condominium buildings, a country club, a high-end residential area, a driving range, police and fire stations, transport hubs, a university and, recently, a central park. E-jeeps ply the central business district. 

Three hospitals—Asian Hospital and Medical Center, Ospital ng Muntinlupa and RITM—and three hotels operate in Filinvest City. An upscale serviced apartment (Somerset Alabang Manila) has expanded the choices of tourists for accommodations there. 

FEU Alabang opened its campus to students in August 2018.

Before the pandemic, the LEED-certified Filinvest City was hosting more than 40,000 people daily. 

PLDT’s new headquarters will add several thousand people to those already working in the central business district.