DigiPlus Hires Teneo, a CEO Advisory Firm With Deep Political and Regulatory Access

What happened

DigiPlus Interactive Corp. has appointed Teneo, a global CEO advisory firm, as strategic adviser to support its international expansion. Teneo will provide senior counsel as DigiPlus assesses market conditions, regulatory requirements, and business risk across its overseas operations, which currently span Brazil, where the company is relaunching under the GamePlus brand, and South Africa, targeting a 2027 launch. DigiPlus has also filed an expression of interest for an online gaming licence in New Zealand, whose new regulatory framework opens on December 1, 2026, with up to 15 licences available. If successful, New Zealand becomes DigiPlus's third overseas market. The Teneo appointment landed less than two weeks after the DigiPlus board approved that New Zealand filing.

This builds on a Singapore-based entity, under parent company Diginvest Holdings, that DigiPlus already established specifically to support international expansion, handling partnership development, talent recruitment, and corporate activities tied to overseas operations. Teneo's mandate adds external strategic advice on top of that existing internal structure.

Domestically, DigiPlus reported Q2 2026 net income of PHP6.98 billion, up 124% quarter-on-quarter, a figure driven almost entirely by a non-operating fair value gain on the company's convertible note investment in International Entertainment Corp., owner of New Coast Hotel. Excluding that one-time gain, core net income was PHP2.35 billion, up a more modest 8% quarter-on-quarter, but down 44% compared to the same quarter last year. Gross gaming revenue fell 9% quarter-on-quarter to PHP15.61 billion.

Why it matters

The choice of advisor is worth reading carefully, not overstating. Teneo is not a political-risk boutique, it's a diversified CEO advisory firm spanning five business segments: strategic communications, financial advisory and restructuring, management consulting, risk advisory, and people advisory, including board and executive search. Geopolitics and government affairs is one line inside that portfolio, not the firm's defining business. That said, the practice is real and actively growing. Teneo has recently added senior advisors to it with genuine political and intelligence pedigree, including a former head of MI6 and a former US deputy director of national intelligence. For a company navigating capped-licence processes in new regulatory jurisdictions, that specific capability, sitting alongside Teneo's broader strategic and financial advisory bench, is directly relevant, even if it isn't the whole firm's identity.

The timing against DigiPlus's own numbers sharpens the read. The headline "124% net income growth" figure obscures a genuine underlying weakness: core operating profit, stripped of the one-time IEC fair value gain, actually declined 44% year-on-year, even as gross gaming revenue fell 9% quarter-on-quarter. DigiPlus is not investing in international advisory firepower from a position of untouchable domestic strength. It's doing so while its core Philippine business shows real margin and revenue pressure, the same structural contraction the wider market has been reporting all year. That makes the international push read less like opportunistic expansion and more like a deliberate hedge against a domestic ceiling management can see clearly in its own numbers.

For competitors who have treated DigiPlus as a primarily domestic operator, this is the moment to revise that assumption. A company building dedicated international infrastructure, pursuing multiple overseas licences in parallel, Brazil live, South Africa in progress, New Zealand filed, and now adding senior advisory support with real government-affairs capability, is signaling serious, sustained overseas commitment, not a single opportunistic bet.

The New Zealand filing deserves attention on its own terms too. A framework offering up to 15 licences opening in a single window is a genuinely competitive allocation process, and Teneo's government affairs and risk advisory capability is directly relevant to securing a favourable position in that kind of contest, not just complying with the rules once licensed.