Short answer. No. Only Filipino citizens, or companies whose authorised and voting capital stock is at least seventy-five per cent owned and controlled by Filipinos, may take part in recruitment and placement. The restriction covers local placement as well as overseas, and control matters as much as ownership.
What the law says
Only Filipino citizens or corporations, partnerships or entities at least seventy-five percent (75%) of the authorized and voting capital stock of which is owned and controlled by Filipino citizens shall be permitted to participate in the recruitment and placement of workers, locally or overseas.
Labor Code, Article 27 — Filipino Ownership Requirement. Read the full provision →
The threshold is three-quarters, and it is measured twice
The provision permits participation only by Filipino citizens or corporations, partnerships or entities at least seventy-five percent (75%) of the authorized and voting capital stock of which is owned and controlled by Filipino citizens. Read the qualifiers separately. The seventy-five per cent is computed on the authorized and voting capital stock, so non-voting shares do not help a company reach the line, and a structure that hands Filipinos most of the money but few of the votes misses the requirement. The word controlled then sits beside owned, which means the paper cap table is not the end of the inquiry.
Partnerships and unincorporated ventures are covered too
The section does not speak only of corporations. It reaches corporations, partnerships or entities, which forecloses the obvious workaround of running the business through a partnership or some looser arrangement rather than a registered company. The restriction attaches to the activity — recruitment and placement — and follows it into whatever vehicle it is conducted in. That is why the question a foreign investor should be asking is not which structure escapes the rule, but whether the venture is participating in recruitment and placement at all.
It is not only about jobs abroad
Many readers assume this is an overseas employment rule. The text says locally or overseas, so a purely domestic placement business is subject to the same nationality requirement as one deploying workers to another country. That catches arrangements people do not think of as recruitment agencies — a foreign-owned outfit whose business is supplying workers to Philippine clients is participating in placement, whatever it calls itself in its marketing.
Where these arrangements come apart
Nominee shareholdings are the usual failure. A cap table showing seventy-five per cent Filipino ownership is worth little if the shares are held for a foreign principal, and control is often visible in documents the cap table does not include: the loan agreements funding the company, the management contract, the board and signatory arrangements, and who can appoint or remove officers. If you are being asked to hold shares on someone else's behalf in a recruitment business, get advice before signing — the exposure of a nominee is not limited to losing the shares.