I was fortunate enough to cross paths last week with former Ambassador to Italy and now Chairman of Abacus Holdings Jose V. Romero, and in the course of our brief conversation he made a most interesting point: The country and foreign investors have very different perceptions of their relationship. Government policy—which in turn informs management and market perceptions—carefully maintains the distinction between “foreign” and “domestic” capital, while the investors themselves, at least once they have gone beyond the entry phase, see their enterprises as a part of the economic landscape; a joint-venture or other sort of partnership by technical definition, certainly, but a Filipino business in most every other respect—located in the Philippines, making use of Philippine resources, subject to Philippine law, and in one way or another contributing to the Philippine market.