Ex-finance chief, Singtel CEO join Ayala Corp. board

MANILA, Philippines — Ayala Corp., the country’s oldest conglomerate, has welcomed former finance secretary Cesar Purisima and former Singtel Group CEO Chua Sock Koong to its board of directors.

Purisima and Chua take the seats of outgoing directors Keiichi Matsunaga and Antonio Jose Periquet, who had been part of the Ayala board since April 2017 and September 2010, respectively.

Purisima was the country’s finance chief and chair of the economic development cluster under the administration of late president Benigno Simeon Aquino.

Chua, on the other hand, is the senior advisor at Singtel, Asia’s leading communications technology group, where she also served as group CEO for 13 years until December 2020. 

She is currently the deputy chairman of Singapore’s Public Service Commission and a member of the Council of Presidential Advisers and the Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council.

With the addition of Chua, the Ayala board now has two female directors, including ex-Sun Life Financial (Philippines) CEO Rizalina Mantaring.

“We always strive to achieve sufficient diversity of thinking across our board representation and have worked to create a proper combination of knowledge, experience, and expertise to guide management. With an increasing demand for companies to adhere to new ESG standards, we understand the need to always focus on revisiting our board composition and allowing transitions to take place at appropriate moments,” Ayala Corp. chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala said during the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting yesterday.

“We believe Mr. Purisima and Ms. Chua will provide immense value and complement the existing expertise and strengths of our current directors,” he said.

The Ayala group has earmarked up to P285 billion in combined capital expenditure and investments this year to execute on the growth initiatives across its businesses.

Aside from supporting the continued expansion of its core value drivers Ayala Land, BPI, Globe, and ACEN, the group will also scale up emerging businesses AC Health and AC Logistics to create new sources of growth and value. 

Ayala Corp. is targeting to raise $1 billion from value realization initiatives by 2023, which is executed through a combination of strategic partnerships and divestment of certain non-core assets. 

The proceeds will be used to fund future investments and further strengthen the company’s balance sheet.

“We have so far realized $614 million or 61 percent of our target,” Ayala Corp. president and CEO Fernando Zobel de Ayala said.

“And to achieve the remainder of the target, we’re working towards divesting our remaining thermal assets, some of our passive investments under AC Ventures, our stake in LRT-1, and some of our other non-core businesses,” he said.

Fernando Zobel said Ayala Corp.’s diversified portfolio provides a natural mechanism to mitigate the adverse impact and capitalize on opportunities arising from the global health and economic crisis.

“With the improving macroeconomic fundamentals, de-escalation of quarantine measures to the lowest status, and high rate of inoculation, we are hopeful that 2022 will be the start of our country’s recovery,” he said.