SM Development Corp. (SMDC) marked a historic milestone at the 19th PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Grand Final, with Chairman Henry T. Sy, Jr. and Vice-President Jessica Bianca Sy earning prestigious accolades for their groundbreaking contributions to real estate and community development. This remarkable father-daughter achievement highlights SMDC’s unwavering dedication to building sustainable, inclusive communities that uplift Filipino lives.
Henry T. Sy, Jr.: Honored with the Icon Award for Building a Nation of Homeowners
As SMDC celebrates its 20th anniversary and commemorates the 100th birth anniversary of the late Henry Sy, Sr., Chairman Henry T. Sy, Jr. was awarded the 2024 PropertyGuru Icon Award. This honor reflects his visionary leadership in championing accessible homeownership and transforming the real estate landscape.
“My father once said, “To serve the Filipino people has always been my greatest joy,” Sy shared. “His vision taught us that business is not just about profile but about service. At SMDC, owning a home means more than a place to live — it represents security, dignity, and the foundation for a brighter future.”
Under Sy’s leadership, SMDC has redefined urban living with world-class, disaster-resilient, and eco-friendly communities designed for affordability and accessibility. These developments empower families to thrive in a rapidly evolving world, blending innovative solutions with sustainability at their core.
“This recognition belongs to everyone who shares our dream of creating a better tomorrow for Filipinos,” Sy remarked, emphasizing the collaborative spirit behind SMDC’s success.
Jessica Bianca Sy: Redefining Communities and Empowering Women
Jessica Bianca Sy, SMDC’s Vice-President and Head of Design, Innovation, and Strategy, was celebrated as one of Asia’s Power Women, a distinction that honors her leadership in crafting inclusive, eco-conscious developments and advocating for gender inclusivity in real estate.
“My father taught me that true success lies not in personal milestones, but in creating meaningful impact,” Jessica shared, reflecting on the values that guide her work.
As a trailblazer in urban development, Jessica has been instrumental in shaping communities that prioritize people and the planet. Her efforts to champion diversity in the workplace — particularly in architecture and design — underscore her belief that innovation flourishes when inclusivity thrives.
“When women support each other and work alongside men who champion their growth, we create a future where collaboration and inclusivity thrive,” she shared.
A Shared Vision of Purpose and Progress
The dual recognition of Henry T. Sy, Jr. and Jessica Bianca Sy reinforces SMDC’s mission of transforming lives through real estate. As the company marks two decades of excellence, these awards serve as a testament to its commitment to creating communities where Filipinos can live with dignity, security, and hope.
SMDC’s transformative impact extends beyond buildings; it fosters progress, inspires innovation, and empowers generations to come. These accolades are a celebration of leadership rooted in purpose and a vision that continues to shape a better future for all.
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The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has turned more aggressive in chasing tax violators, whether businesses or individuals. Why is it difficult for many ventures and people to comply with the requirement to pay proper taxes?
For seasoned taxation and corporate lawyer Ma. Louella ‘Peaches’ M. Aranas, there should never be any issue if organizations and individuals diligently and correctly comply with this obligation to the nation.
“It has often been said, ‘Taxes are the lifeblood of a nation.’ To put that in a relatable context, our bodies will not function properly and we can even die if we don’t have enough blood going through our system, carrying oxygen and nutrients to the different organs,” Atty. Peaches starts to explain.
“Without taxes, the different government agencies will not function properly, and government services will not be provided to the people. Utilities and basic necessities [services] will not be available; roads and airports will not be built; we will not have policemen or firemen to secure lives and properties. We will not have teachers to educate children, nor will have doctors, dentists, and nurses to take care of our physical health,” she continues.
Tax and civilized society
Atty. Peaches reiterates that taxes are what citizens pay for them to be able to live in a civilized society. “Without taxes, a nation will suffer and perish,” she adds to emphasize the importance of complying with the obligation. At the same time, the tax lawyer reminds that paying the right and correct amount of taxes is key to avoiding problems with the tax collectors.
Employees don’t usually have tax problems as income taxes are automatically deducted from their salaries. The pitfalls are encountered by businesses and individuals who voluntarily pay taxes on their own.
“I advise businesses to be compliant with the requirements of the law and more importantly to pay the correct taxes. I believe that it is advantageous for businesses to partner with their tax lawyers to ensure that they are compliant with the law. Much like an executive checkup, it is advisable for corporations to do a tax diligence review every year,” she advises. Logically, the idea also applies to high-tax-paying individuals.
Resolving tax conflicts
To date, among the most persistent taxation issues that corporations and even individuals face is when the BIR imputes additional income based on the agency’s own audit findings. In such cases, the additional income means that there is additional tax to be paid. This usually constitutes deficiencies in taxes demanded by the BIR.
Atty. Peaches reminds everyone that the law is always there to guide and support taxpayers, even those who are facing problems with the BIR. “I believe that taxpayers should avail of the remedies given by the law to them. This includes remedy in the form of judicial recourse. If the BIR makes a wrongful or erroneous tax ruling, I do agree that this should be challenged before the Court of Tax Appeals,” she explains.
Atty. Peaches is the Founder and Managing Partner of LMA Law, a law firm focusing on taxation and corporate law. She is also a Co-Founder and CEO of Alternative Center for Continuing Education and Seminar Solutions, Inc. (ACCESS), a pioneer in online and on-demand programs covering Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in the country. At the same time, she is a faculty member of the Lyceum of the Philippines University College of Law, where she teaches tax laws.
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NEW YORK – Donald Trump on Monday lost a bid to overturn his criminal conviction stemming from hush money paid to a porn star in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s July ruling recognizing immunity from prosecution for a president’s official acts.
Justice Juan Merchan’s denial of Trump’s motion to dismiss the New York state case forecloses one avenue for the Republican president-elect to enter the White House on Jan. 20 for his second four-year term without the stain of a criminal conviction.
Trump’s lawyers are separately trying to have the verdict overturned on separate grounds in the wake of his defeat of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. Mr. Merchan has not yet ruled on that motion.
In Monday’s 41-page decision, Mr. Merchan sided with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case. The prosecutors argued their case dealt with Trump’s personal conduct, not his official acts as president.
The judge said Trump’s prosecution for “decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”
In a statement, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung called Mr. Merchan’s decision “a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity.”
The case stemmed from a $130,000 payment that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen made to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. The payment was for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she has said she had a decade earlier with Mr. Trump, who denies it.
A Manhattan jury in May found Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the payment. It was the first time a U.S. president – former or sitting – had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.
Mr. Trump pleaded not guilty and called the case an attempt by Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, to harm his 2024 campaign.
‘WHOLLY UNOFFICIAL CONDUCT’
The hush money case was the only one of four sets of criminal charges brought against Trump in 2023 to reach trial.
Federal cases over his efforts to change the result of the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents upon leaving office have been dismissed, per U.S. Department of Justice policy holding that presidents cannot be federally prosecuted.
Another criminal case against Mr. Trump over the 2020 election in Georgia state court is in limbo. He pleaded not guilty in all cases.
The Supreme Court, in a decision arising from one of the two federal cases against Mr. Trump, decided that presidents are immune from prosecution involving their official acts, and that juries cannot be presented evidence of official acts in trials over personal conduct. It marked the first time that the court recognized any degree of presidential immunity from prosecution.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers said the New York jury that convicted him was shown evidence by prosecutors of his social media posts as president and heard testimony from his former aides about conversations that occurred in the White House during his 2017-2021 term.
Prosecutors with Mr. Bragg’s office countered that the Supreme Court’s ruling has no bearing on the case, which they said concerned “wholly unofficial conduct.” The Supreme Court in its ruling found no immunity for a president’s unofficial acts.
‘EXTREME REMEDY’
Mr. Trump was initially scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but Justice Merchan pushed that back indefinitely after his election win.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers earlier this month filed a separate motion urging Mr. Merchan to dismiss the charges because having them loom over Trump while he was serving as president would impede his ability to govern.
Mr. Bragg’s office said there were measures short of the “extreme remedy” of overturning the jury’s verdict that could assuage Trump’s concerns.
It is not clear when Mr. Merchan will rule. – Reuters
SEOUL – South Korea’s acting president Han Duck-soo on Tuesday called for next year’s government budget to be swiftly implemented from the start of 2025 in order to help revive the country’s slowing economy.
Han has been working to reassure South Korea’s allies and calm financial markets, since President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached and suspended from his duties on Saturday over his short-lived attempt to impose martial law.
The acting president was speaking at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
South Korea faces economic challenges, including heightened uncertainty for the trade-dependent country created by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to hike tariffs, as export growth in Asia’s fourth-largest economy slowed for a fourth-straight month in November, to the weakest level in 14 months. – Reuters
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Commerce Department is moving to further crack down on China Telecom’s U.S. unit over concerns it could exploit access to American data through their U.S. cloud and internet businesses by providing it to Beijing, a source told Reuters.
The source confirmed a New York Times report that the department last week sent China Telecom Americas a preliminary determination that its presence in U.S. networks and cloud services poses U.S. national security risks and gave the company 30 days to respond.
In 2021, the Federal Communications Commission revoked China Telecom Americas’ authorization to operate in the United States, citing national security concerns.
China Telecom Americas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There is growing alarm in Washington about China’s alleged efforts known as Salt Typhoon to infiltrate American telecommunications companies and steal data about U.S. calls. Senators have said the attack likely represents the largest telecommunications hack in U.S. history.
Reuters first reported in June that the Biden administration was investigating China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom over their U.S. cloud and internet businesses.
In June, the FCC advanced a proposal to boost internet routing security on networks in the face of concerns raised by U.S. officials about China’s ability to divert internet traffic.
The Chinese companies still have a small presence in the United States, for example, providing cloud services and routing wholesale U.S. internet traffic. That gives them access to Americans’ data even after the FCC barred them from providing telephone and retail internet services in the United States.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is central to the internet’s global information routing system. The FCC said China Telecom had used BGP vulnerabilities “to misroute United States internet traffic on at least six occasions.
The FCC in 2022 revoked China Unicom America’s authorization to operate in the United States. In 2019, the FCC rejected China Mobile bid to provide U.S. telecommunications services.
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks in 2022 raised alarm, saying Chinese telecom firms could “continue to offer data center services to American consumers” despite the revocation and urged further action to address security concerns posed by the centers. – Reuters
WASHINGTON – The head of a U.S.-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside of Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site at al Qutayfah, 25 miles (40 km) north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves that he had identified over the years.
“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site, said Mr. Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. “It’s a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative estimate.”
Mr. Moustafa said that he is sure there are more mass graves than the five sites, and that along with Syrians victims included U.S. and British citizens and other foreigners.
Reuters was unable to confirm Mr. Moustafa’s allegations.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against his rule grew into a full-scale civil war.
Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system.
Assad repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.
Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He assumed the role in January – while Assad was still in power – but told reporters last week that he was awaiting instructions from the new authorities and would “keep defending and working for the Syrian people.”
Mr. Moustafa arrived in Syria after Assad flew to Russia and his government collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by rebels that ended his family’s more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule.
He spoke to Reuters after he was interviewed at the site in al Qutayfah by Britain’s Channel 4 News for a report on the alleged mass grave there.
He said the intelligence branch of the Syrian air force was “in charge of bodies going from military hospitals, where bodies were collected after they’d been tortured to death, to different intelligence branches, and then they would be sent to a mass grave location.”
Corpses also were transported to sites by the Damascus municipal funeral office whose personnel helped unload them from refrigerated tractor-trailers, he said.
“We were able to talk to the people who worked on these mass graves that had on their own escaped Syria or that we helped to escape,” said Mr. Moustafa.
His group has spoken to bulldozer drivers compelled to dig graves and “many times on orders, squished the bodies down to fit them in and then cover them with dirt,” he said.
Mr. Moustafa expressed concern that graves sites were unsecured and said they needed to be preserved to safeguard evidence for investigations. – Reuters
WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that the U.S. military should tell the American public about the nature of the drone sightings that have plagued the East Coast over the last several weeks.
“The government knows what is happening,” Mr. Trump said. “For some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is our military knows and our president knows.”
Mr. Trump, speaking at a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida, said, “I can’t imagine it’s the enemy,” without going into specifics. He declined to answer whether he had received an intelligence briefing on the matter.
A Pentagon spokesperson, speaking with reporters earlier on Monday before Trump spoke, reiterated that the drones in question were not U.S. military ones. The spokesperson added that the military was limited by law in what it could do to detect and track drones within the United States, unless there was a threat.
“Flying drones is not illegal. There are thousands of drones flown around the U.S. on a daily basis. So, as a result, it’s not that unusual to see drones in the sky, nor is it an indication of malicious activity or any public safety threat,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told reporters.
“The same applies to drones flown near U.S. military installations. Some fly near or over our bases from time to time. That, in of itself, is not unusual, and the vast majority pose no physical threat to our forces or impact our operations,” Mr. Ryder added.
A spate of reported drone sightings that began in New Jersey in mid-November spread in recent days to include Maryland, Massachusetts and other states. U.S. officials said on Saturday that most of the sightings involved manned aircraft and that there was no evidence of a national security threat.
An FBI official told reporters that less than 100 of the over 5,000 reported sightings had turned out to merit further investigation, and all of the large fixed-wing reported sightings so far involved manned aircraft.
Mr. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said on Sunday that the drone sightings underscored gaps in U.S. airspace security that need to be closed.
A U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the military was bringing in drone detecting and tracking systems to Picatinny Arsenal and Naval Weapons Station Earle in New Jersey, though it was not clear when they would be operational. The official emphasized that to date none of the drone sightings pose a threat.
The drone sightings to date do not include any unlawful activity or any national security or safety risk to the United States, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday. Mr. Kirby said the assessment came from U.S. law enforcement. – Reuters
LONDON – A Chinese national with close links to Prince Andrew said he had done nothing wrong and was not a spy, after the businessman was named in court as being a suspected Chinese agent by the British authorities.
Yang Tengbo, described in a ruling last week by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) as a “close confidant” of Andrew, waived his right to anonymity on Monday so he could respond to the accusation.
“I have done nothing wrong or unlawful, and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded,” he said in a statement released by his lawyer, referring to Britain’s interior ministry. “The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue.”
The 50-year-old, who had previously been granted anonymity in the SIAC proceedings, was removed from a flight from Beijing to London in February 2023 and told that Britain intended to ban him from the country. This happened the following month on national security grounds.
Yang appealed against the ban at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which rejected his case in a written ruling last Thursday – the first time the reported relationship had come to light.
Britain’s Home Office told Yang they had reason to believe he was “engaging, or had previously engaged, in covert and deceptive activity on behalf of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) which is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state apparatus”, in a July 2023 letter quoted in SIAC’s ruling.
The Home Office said it believed Yang was “likely to pose a threat to UK national security”.
Yang’s lawyer, Guy Vassall-Adams, told the High Court on Monday that his client had waived his right to anonymity to make a statement, and the judge, Martin Chamberlain, agreed.
On Friday, Andrew, the younger brother of King Charles, issued a statement to the BBC and other media in which he said he had “ceased all contact” with the individual once concerns were raised.
The ruling said evidence obtained from Yang’s phone showed Andrew had authorized him to set up an international financial initiative to engage with potential partners and investors in China. The ruling did not say what the fund was intended for.
Reuters contacted Andrew’s office for further comment but did not receive an immediate response.
A spokesperson at the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that China had always been open and above board and has never engaged in deception or interference. The spokesperson added that the groundless speculation was “not worth refuting”.
In a statement on its website, the Chinese embassy in London early on Tuesday urged “the UK side to immediately stop creating trouble, stop anti-China political manipulation, and stop undermining normal personnel exchanges between China and the UK.” – Reuters
Powerful weight-loss drugs are expanding use of U.S. health care as patients starting prescriptions are diagnosed with obesity-related conditions or take the drugs to become eligible for other services, health records and discussions with doctors show.
An exclusive analysis of hundreds of thousands of electronic patient records by health data firm Truveta found slight, but measurable, increases in first-time diagnoses of sleep apnea, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes within 15 days of an initial prescription for a GLP-1 weight-loss drug between 2020 and 2024.
In addition to obesity-related conditions, some patients are being prescribed the drugs to lose weight and become eligible for services, including organ transplants, fertility treatments or knee replacements, according to interviews with seven doctors and five other health experts.
“This is a population that previously felt stigmatized by health care providers and often didn’t return. But now that they’re actually seeing themselves get healthier, asking clinicians questions and engaging more, I do think we’re seeing new patients,” said Dr. Rekha Kumar, a New York endocrinologist and obesity medicine specialist.
Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Ozempic and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound and Mounjaro have been shown to lead to average weight loss of at least 15%.
Andrew Friedson, director of health economics at the Milken Institute and three other experts said the impact of the drugs on overall healthcare use is not yet clear. The new diagnoses could mean higher initial spending, but early detection could save costs down the line, he said.
Dr. Courtney Younglove, an obesity medicine specialist and founder of Heartland Weight Loss clinic in Overland Park, Kansas, said she has referred obesity patients for long-delayed pap smears and other routine care, including colonoscopies. Many overweight patients avoid doctors and routine tests for years due to the stigma and bias they often encounter, she said. “A lot of people with obesity don’t do a lot of preventive health maintenance.”
‘THE COURAGE TO ASK’
Phil, a 43-year-old Chicago technology executive who asked for his full name to be withheld for privacy reasons, generally avoided doctors before receiving a GLP-1 prescription from a telehealth provider in early 2023.
He said he told his regular physician about the medication months later, after he had lost more than 30 lbs, and was taken aback by her supportive response. He decided then to advocate more for himself and ask for help with other conditions, including addiction and mental health.
“It gave me the courage to ask,” he said.
The Truveta analysis found that for every 1,000 patients with a first-time GLP-1 prescription, 42 were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within 15 days in 2024, up from 32 in 2020. Over the same period, the number of sleep apnea diagnoses per 1,000 patients rose to 11 from 8 and the number of cardiovascular disease diagnoses increased to 15 from 13.
The most obese patients were twice as likely as people who were less overweight to receive a type 2 diabetes diagnosis, and three times as likely to be diagnosed with sleep apnea, the Truveta data showed.
The analysis was based on 33,630 first-time GLP-1 prescriptions for overweight or obese patients in 2020 and 224,496 in the first 10 months of 2024.
Lilly declined to directly comment on the data, saying in an emailed statement “it is important that adults living with obesity receive appropriate diagnosis and access to evidence-based care.”
Novo Nordisk also declined to comment directly, noting its aim “to address unmet needs for a wider range of patients.”
QUALIFYING FOR SURGERIES
ResMed, which sells sleep apnea devices, had revenue growth of 11% for its fiscal year ending in June – a trend the company attributed in part to the GLP-1 drugs.
The medications are “bringing people into primary care like never before,” ResMed CEO Michael Farrell said at the company’s recent shareholder meeting.
In addition to things like sleep apnea, the weight-loss drugs could lead to more joint replacements, said Sara Mallatt, director of healthcare research at market analysis firm AlphaSense.
“As people’s BMIs come down, they’ll be eligible for surgeries they wouldn’t otherwise,” she said. “No one is saying this is happening in a meaningful way right now, but we think it will.”
University of Chicago Medicine last year launched a weight-loss clinic aimed at helping prospective organ transplant patients lose weight to qualify for surgery, with the GLP-1 drugs playing a key role.
“Before they had a place to send these patients, which is our clinic, the scheduler would just say, ‘hey, what’s your weight, what’s your height, what’s your BMI,’ and if they didn’t fit their criteria, they would just tell them to lose weight on their own,” said Anesia Reticker, the center’s clinical pharmacist specialist.
Retired Indiana steelworker Bensabio Guajardo, 68, was prescribed Ozempic at the clinic in 2023 when he was deemed too obese for a double lung transplant needed to keep him alive after pulmonary fibrosis made breathing increasingly difficult.
“It helped me a lot. It took my cravings away,” Guajardo said. After losing around 90 pounds and stopping the drug ahead of a successful surgery in May, his doctor put him back on it to control high blood sugar.
Reticker said the program has received about 100 referrals over the past year from transplant centers in the Chicago area. – Reuters
HANOVER, Germany – Volkswagen management and labor representatives negotiated late into the night on Monday in a last-ditch round of talks on cost cuts before Christmas, with unions saying it remained far from clear whether compromise would be reached.
Talks ended after around 13 hours of negotiation in the early hours on Tuesday without a deal but would resume mid-morning, a spokesperson for IG Metall union said.
The sides were far apart on key points, with unions adamant that any solution must exclude plant closures and the carmaker insisting it cannot rule them out.
“It was far from clear late on Monday evening whether rapprochement or a stalemate were a realistic outcome of the talks on Tuesday,” the IG Metall union said in a statement published to its website.
Unions have threatened unprecedented strike action in the new year if a compromise is not found in this week’s talks, which both sides have said could last several days.
“Workers don’t want to go into Christmas in fear,” she told union members outside the hotel before talks began early on Monday, the fifth round since early September.
Europe’s biggest carmakers are being squeezed by high costs and the arrival of cheaper Chinese competitors which are taking the battle for market share to their home turf.
Unions blame poor decisions by management for Volkswagen’s malaise, from the diesel emissions scandal to not investing earlier in affordable EV technology.
Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, has seen its share price fall by more than a third over the past 12 months, reflecting the sprawling German group’s difficulties in tackling rising rivals and a slowdown in EV demand.
The carmaker, like others across Europe, is struggling with overcapacity in high-cost markets squeezing margins and persistently lower sales. VW has said it does not expect car sales, down by around 2 million in Europe since the pandemic, to fully recover, and it must adapt.
More than 100,000 staff at nine plants across Germany downed tools last week in the largest strikes at the carmaker, protesting against management’s stance that wages must be cut and capacity downsized for the VW brand to stay competitive.
In a sign of the depth of Volkswagen’s problems, its top shareholder Porsche SE on Friday said it may have to write down the value of its 31.9% stake by as much as 20 billion euros ($21 billion).
This is mainly due to the delay in Volkswagen’s annual planning round as a direct consequence of the prolonged talks with unions, Stifel analysts said in a note.
Such a write down would still assume a book value for Volkswagen shares that is more than twice as high as its current market price, they added.
Shares in Porsche SE, which serves as the investment vehicle of the Porsche and Piech families and also holds a 12.5% stake in the namesake carmaker, were down 2.9%. – Reuters
SM, through the SM Store’s “Shop and Share a Toy” recently provided Christmas toys to 6,000 underprivileged kids in Metro Manila, Cagayan, Isabela, Batangas, Bicol Region, Cebu, and Zamboanga City to herald the season of giving.
This year’s initiative was a 20% increase from last year’s 5,000 donated toys. The distribution of toys was conducted in partnership with SM Foundation, World Vision, Good Neighbors Philippines, and Rotary International.
From Dec. 1 to 10, 2024, SM Store offered customers the chance to bring joy to a child by donating a toy with a small contribution. For every single-receipt purchase of P3,000, customers were eligible to donate a brand-new toy for only P100.
Through the donations from the campaign, select SPED (Special Education) schools in Zamboanga City were also able to recreate their play area inside the classrooms.
A 2021 study highlighted the vital role of games and toys in children’s lives, contributing significantly to their cognitive, motor, psychosocial, emotional, and linguistic development.
For more information about SM Store’s Shop&Share programs, visit smstore.com/csr.
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