Among the many Filipino entrepreneurs whose businesses flourished in this period was Eugenio Lopez Sr., a businessman who would soon establish a conglomerate that would become First Philippine Holdings Corporation.

[citation needed] But although Meralco was a stable and highly profitable enterprise, the government's decree of pushing for more Filipino participation in the business prodded General Public Utilities (GPU) president Albert F. Tegen, to find a buyer for the company.

Tegen approached a number of the leaders in the Manila's business community, including the Araneta-Zobel group, which balked at buying only 5% of the company.

Eventually the key people involved in the buyout of the company – Tegen and Roberto T. Villanueva, BISCOM's chairman of the board, crossed paths in New York.

Knowing that Villanueva was instrumental in the successful Filipino buyout of several companies, Tegen asked him to explore the possibility of the Lopez Group buying Meralco.

Even Lopez knew how risky the Meralco deal would be, for none of his previous business acquisitions amounted to its sale price.

Its 14 initial incorporators comprised some of the brightest businessmen at that time: Rafael Anton, Salvador Araneta, Antonio Delgado, Senen Gabaldon, Emilio Gonzales La'O, Ricardo Ledesma, Eugenio Lopez, Eugenio Lopez, Jr. (Geny), Alfredo Montelibano, Ernesto Oppen, Jr., Ernesto Rufino, Sr., Jose Soriano, Dolores De Tuazon, and Roberto Villanueva.

[citation needed] MSC's management had two main goals in mind: to pay for the buy out of Meralco and run it far better than it had been before.

Paterno's success in tapping new funds from international capital markets freed the company from major financial worries for at least the next four years.

In the same year, Don Eugenio created a Department of Economic Research and Development headed by his son, Oscar M. Lopez.

Aside from the pipeline industry, MSC created Philippines Engineering Construction Corporation (PECCO) with Lorenzo R. Funtanilla project superintendent Pililla Rizal thereafter was the sister company became ECCO-Asia now Philec and many other subsidiaries.

And shortly after the midnight of September 22, elements of the 51st Army Engineering Brigade entered the Meralco compound and took over the power company.

The Marcos regime used various tactics to force Don Eugenio to hand over his controlling stake in MSC and Meralco to the dictator and his cronies.

Two of which included a government-imposed cut in power rates and the imprisonment of Geny, his eldest son, on trumped-up charges.

Despite this, Marcos reneged on his promise to set Geny free even until Don Eugenio's death on July 6, 1975, in San Francisco, US.

The establishment of FHI positioned the company for expanding its contracting and project management services abroad, particularly in the Middle East, which was then regarded as the primary source of profitable undertakings.

Amidst divestment of assets and scaled down activities, the company suffered years of consolidated net losses.

With the national economy in ruins and failure of the electoral process, calls for reform were coming from the local and foreign community.

President Marcos was hounded by pressure from many sides – an increasingly restive people, a rapidly failing economy, growing doubts by foreign creditors, a hostile international press, and unbridled corruption of his closest allies.

Filipinos from all walks of life gathered together joins to fight Philippine's Government – to the historic EDSA revolution.

This decade also marked the company's entry into infrastructure with the development of the North Luzon Expressway (NLEX), an 84-kilometer highway – the longest toll road in the country in terms of lane-kilometers.

FPIDC incorporated the Manila North Tollways Corporation (MNTC) in February 1997 as the operating company for the NLEX project.

However, in 2008, First Holdings sold its toll road business to Metro Pacific Investment Corporation, a company with interests in real estate, utilities, and shipping.

The following year, First Gen acquired a 60% economic interest in Philippine National Oil Company – Energy Development Corporation (EDC).

EDC was established in 1976, to wean the country from its dependence on imported fuels by developing renewable sources of energy.

This subsidiary, a joint venture between First Holdings and the Sunpower of the United States, aims to develop the solar energy industry in the Philippines and to compete with companies providing wafer-slicing services in China, Japan, and Germany.

Currency movements, high finance costs, and other factors caused First Holdings to sell 20 percent of its ownership in Meralco to Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT).

First Holdings was among eight companies that received a gold award[2] (a rating between 95 and 99%) for garnering the highest ratings, among 169 publicly listed companies, in the 2008 Corporate Governance Scorecard Project (CG-Sc), conducted by the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), Philippine Stock Exchange and Securities and Exchange Commission.

[citation needed] Second, it received a gold award from the ICD for its commitment to good corporate governance.

First Holdings, through First Gen Corporation, has investments in gas-fired, bunker-fired, hydroelectric and geothermal power generation plants.