Eugenio Lopez, Sr.

López began as a provincial bus operator, and eventually became chairman of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, the Philippine's largest media conglomerate, and president of the Manila Electric Company (Meralco). In 1972 he accepted a Distinguished Service Award from the Harvard Business School, but several months later was compelled by President Ferdinand Marcos to sign over his shares in Meralco, was stripped of his holdings and forced into exile.

López was born on July 20, 1901, in Jaro, Iloilo City. His parents were Benito Villanueva López, a former governor of Iloilo, and Presentación Javelona Hofileña. He was the older brother and only sibling of former Philippine Vice President Fernando López. He received his education at the Ateneo de Manila where he graduated in 1919, and later the original campus of the University of the Philippines in Manila, where he took up law and graduated in 1923. He earned his master of laws degree from Harvard University.

He was the first president, or "charter president", of the Rotary Club of Iloilo, the third oldest Rotary Club in the Philippines. His family residence in Iloilo City known as the Lopez Boat House, built in 1935, was declared a National Heritage House by the National Historical Commission in 2002.