F.J.D. Clemo, a British shipping executive, arrived in The Republic of the Philippines in 1950, transferred by United States Shipping Lines from their Hong Kong office to Manila. In 1968, he retired from U.S. Lines and ventured into partnership with Filipino colleagues for the major purpose of locally representing various foreign shipping concerns locally.

On 6th July 1973, Aquila Maritime Business Inc. (Aquila), the first of what is now unofficially called The Aquila Group of Companies, was registered in the Philippines. In 1977 Mr. Clemo became a naturalised Filipino citizen and assumed sole proprietorship of Aquila. With Aquila as the mother company, our organisation has been involved in those days in a wide range of shipping-related activities: air and sea freight forwarding, N.V.O.C.C., trucking, brokerage, container leasing, maritime insurance and acting as agents in the Philippines for a number of foreign concerns.

As early as 1978 Aquila began handling on an ad hoc basis personal injury claims for the first of the Protection and Indemnity (P&I) Associations that approached our organisation seeking purely commercial assistance. Within a few years Aquila's P&I involvement assumed so large a part of our corporate life that the need for the incorporation of a separate company became apparent.

Thus, in June of 1982 Pandiman Philippines, Inc. (an acronym for P-and-I Man(ila), was registered as correspondent in the Philippines for the various P&I Associations looking to our organisation for assistance.

It was the late Mr. Clemo who designed the Pandiman logo, which depicts a three-masted vessel towing to safety a second crippled vessel with a broken mast and collapsed sails, an analogous interpretation of the P&I mandate.

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