VGC

The Villena Group of Companies is a Filipino-American dual-listed conglomerate based in Parañaque, Metro Manila, Philippines.

The company's main assets include the Everest Pictures film and television studio, the broadcast media company VGC Inc. (consisting of the VGC television and radio network, television and radio stations, cable networks, and other VGC-branded assets), and the VGC Publishing company (consisting of book and magazine publishing, and various newspapers). The company also owns many subsidiaries of other industries, and a non-profit charity fund.

Headquartered at the VGC Plaza in Parañaque, the company is considered one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines, and one of the largest companies in the world for mass media and scientific biology, as of 2020.

Early newspaper years
On August 10, 1925, Eduardo "Eddy" Villena and his family opened The Manila Post, the first family-run English-language newspaper in the Philippines, then a territory of the United States. The opening of the Post led to the creation of the Manila Post Co., which later became the Villena Corporation.

Entering broadcasting; limited operations during World War II
On January 12, 1940, the Villena Corporation was granted a 25-year legislative broadcast franchise from Congress, a stepping stone for the launching of the company's first radio station KZVC (now DWVG).

The company built new studios in Parañaque, but immediately built another in Perth, Western Australia in 1942, with a transmitter link, due to the Japanese conquering the Philippines. While stations like KZRH (now DZRH) were taken over by the Japanese and became "Philippine Islands AM" (PIAM), the virtual absence of KZVC led to it signing on the airwaves on June 13, 1943 from Perth, with the frequency of 850 kilocycles (now 855 kHz). KZVC was the only station to criticize the Imperial Japanese. Due to the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, the Post and the company's other newspaper closed down temporarily to avoid intervention.

Expansions
When the Second World War ended, the unused Parañaque lot was damaged significantly and the family spent millions of dollars to rebuild the lot, and KZVC went off the air on January 6, 1946 to prepare for the new Parañaque Media Plaza to open its doors. The station went back on the air on July 1, 1946, along with the reopening of the company's newspapers.

In 1950, Villena Corporation began broadcasting an experimental station on VHF channel 6. Three years later, the company was granted commercial licenses for "channel 6", which would sign on as DZVC-TV (now DWVG-TV), as well as other experimental stations in Pampanga, Cebu, Bacolod, Iloilo, and Koronadal. Through the merger with Far East Broadcasting Company, the company changed its name to Villena Group of Companies.

In 1973, VGC opened its first ever biology laboratory in Helsinki, Finland, as its new Villena Biology Company began participating in pharmaceutical experiments and IVF birth trials.

In 1985, VGC acquired Everest Pictures from John K. Matthews for $50 million.

In 2016, VGC acquired 50% of Central Television in partnership with its parent company Central Communications. The acquisition was somewhat controversial within "duopoly skeptics", who fear that VGC would merge the operations of its stations.

Accusations of "playing God"
Villena Biology was accused by the ethics community of using their flagship Helsinki lab to do human cloning experiments since the 1980s.