Gabby Lopez retires as ABS-CBN chair, cousin Mark to take over

Screengrab from news.ABS-CBN.com.

EUGENIO “GABBY” L. Lopez III has stepped down from his position as the chairman of the board of ABS-CBN Corporation, nominating his cousin Martin “Mark” L. Lopez to be the new chair.

The elder Lopez, however, said that he “will not disappear into the woodwork” as he was elected chairman emeritus, the second in the company’s history after his father Eugenio “Geny” Lopez, Jr. He remains a board director.

Gabby Lopez was the company’s CEO from 1997 to 2012. During his chairmanship, ABS-CBN lauched ventures such as broadband Internet via SkyCable and digital terrestrial television (DTT) via ABS-CBN TVplus.

During ABS-CBN’s annual stockholders’ meeting last Thursday, April 19, Lopez stressed the need for young top figures in the company’s management.

“The demographic profile of the Philippines has always been biased toward the youth. Who better to assess the needs of our audience than like-minded young managers,” the 65-year-old Lopez said.

His successor, Mark Lopez, 45, has been with ABS-CBN for seven years and was the company’s chief technology officer. He previously held top executive positions in Manila Electric Company (Meralco).

ABS-CBN said in a statement that Mark Lopez “spearheaded ABS-CBN’s system modernization, highlighted by the migration to the cloud and the automation of content creation and delivery to various media platforms. He was also responsible for ABS-CBN’s migration to HD and the completion of the DTT infrastructure.”