Jaime Zobel Urquijo took the helm as Chief Sustainability and Risk Officer of Ayala Corporation on Tuesday.
“This is a tremendous honor and responsibility, and I am very thankful to Ayala Corporation President & CEO Bong Consing and the board for providing me with this incredible opportunity,” Urquijo said.
“I am extremely fortunate that Ayala Corporation has always been a leader in this field, and although a relatively new position in many companies, I am humbled to be coming into the role as the company’s fourth CSRO. I look forward to building on the incredible foundation that my predecessors have built,” he said.
Urquijo, who was previously Vice President for Business Development at Ayala Corporation’s listed energy platform ACEN, succeeds Albert de Larrazabal who remains Chief Finance Officer of the company. The CSRO role was previously held by former Ayala CFOs Chito Gonzales and TG Limcaoco, who is currently the President & CEO of BPI.
During his tenure at ACEN, Urquijo led initiatives to expand the group’s portfolio of assets in the Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Most recently as country manager for Indonesia, he established ACEN’s office in Jakarta. These initiatives resulted in 500MW of operating wind and solar assets in Vietnam and over 2GW of pipeline projects for ACEN across the region.
Prior to his time at ACEN, he served as the Head of Business Development for AF Payments, Inc., a joint venture between the Ayala group and Metro Pacific which was awarded and successfully delivered on a concession to modernize the ticketing system of the LRT 1, LRT 2, and MRT 3. Urquijo and the AF Payments team created the Beep Card payment system, which delivered the country’s first interoperable public transport payment card, integrating the rail commute of the 1.5 million commuters who use the LRT and MRT daily, with buses and retail use cases.
“Having spent close to 10 years working for different business units within the group, I am really looking forward to the opportunity of returning to Ayala Corporation to build on this experience and position the sustainability and risk teams as valuable partners to the different business units throughout the portfolio, as we all try to tackle the sizable but exciting challenges and opportunities ahead,” he said.
When it comes to the priorities that Urquijo will focus on as the CSRO, he believes that all risk and sustainability teams in the Philippines face a unique set of challenges.
“On the one hand, the Philippines has been ranked as one of the countries most impacted by climate change. This will have a significant impact across our group of companies, and we will need to implement the right mix of adaptation and mitigation initiatives to best address this risk,” he said.
“On the other hand, the country has been projected by PWC to be the 19th largest economy in the world by 2050 (measured in GDP in purchasing power parity terms) as it continues growing faster than most economies. So, there is a very interesting set of trade-offs that we are facing in how we can simultaneously ensure we are managing the risks presented by climate change; continue to be good corporate citizens at a national and global scale; and finally, continue to generate shareholder value and returns and in so doing, hopefully play a part in helping our country to achieve its tremendous growth potential,” he added.
Urquijo elaborated that he has two main priorities as he takes on this new role: to understand, manage, and reduce risks across the portfolio and to generate measurable value through various ESG initiatives implemented across the group.
“The most pressing ESG initiative we are currently working on, guided by the visionary target set by our previous CEO, Fernando Zobel de Ayala, is the group’s commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Our job for the next few years is to figure out how far we are from that target, and then see how we can put a plan in place to achieve it while continuing to grow the business,” he said. “What excites me are the opportunities which are waiting to be explored by being a serious player in this space.”
In addition to his new role, Urquijo is currently a director of BPI, Integrated Micro Electronics, Inc., AC Industrial Technology Holdings, Inc., and Merlin Solar Technology, Inc. Jaime also recently became a trustee and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Ayala Foundation, an organization that he believes will play a leading role in the group’s social initiatives across the communities they serve.
Jaime, 35, received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from University of Notre Dame in the US and his Master’s in Business Administration from INSEAD in France.
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