Nestor Tan: Move fast

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Fifty years of Asia The profiles: 23 of the biggest names in Asia Zafrul Aziz Laura Cha Wei Sun Christianson Piyush Gupta Uday Kotak Reuben Lai Boon Chye Loh Agus Martowardojo Raghuram Rajan Jahja Setiaatmadja Weijian Shan Alan Smith Teh Hong Piow Tian Huiyu Sun Yu Wee Ee Cheong Kartika Wirjoatmodjo Peter Wong Daniel Wu Wu Wei Joseph Yam Zeti Akhtar Aziz

“I’ll share with you something one of my mentors said,” says Nestor Tan, chief executive of BDO Unibank. “When you’re approaching a merger, make sure you move fast. Because if you move fast enough, nobody will have time to think.”

He should know. BDO Unibank, perhaps more than any other large bank in the region, has transformed over the last 25 years.

Tan joined what was then Banco de Oro in 1997, and thinks of its evolution in stages.