AYALA CORPORATION: Ayala Chairman & CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala's Opening Remarks at the Ayala Group Integrated Corporate Governance, Risk Management, and Sustainability Summit 2019

Ayala Corporation issued the following announcement on Aug. 9.

Good morning to everyone, and thank you for being here.

I would like to welcome our board of directors, senior leadership, management teams, and all our employees across the group for taking the time to be here today. Also joining us today are some of our business partners and guests from the government, civil society, and the academe. Welcome to all of you and thank you for being here.

Special thanks to our speakers, most of whom have flown in from different parts of the world:

Our keynote speaker, Peter Bakker, President and CEO of World Business Council for Sustainable Development based in Switzerland. As you know, Ayala recently joined WBCSD and we look forward to working with them on how we can elevate our own sustainability engagement to achieve greater impact.

Commissioner Ephyro Amatong of the Securities and Exchange Commission who will provide some granularity on the SEC’s recently released set of guidelines on sustainability reporting.

Miho Kurosaki, Lead Analyst and Researcher on Energy in Japan and Kore at Bloomberg in Japan

Ben Ridley, Director and Deputy Global Head of Sustainability Affairs at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong

Dominic Thurbon, Partner, Climate Change & Sustainability Services at Ernst & Young in Australia

Na Boon Chong, Managing Director, Consulting Southeast Asia at AON in Singapore

Derek Taylor, Operations Director for the Crisis and Security Consulting Practice in Asia Pacific at Control Risks in Singapore

Elaine Ng, Executive Director for Client Coverage in Asia at MSCI in Hong Kong

Deborah Latimer, Partner, Governance, Regulation, and Conduct Advisory at Deloitte in Australia

Christopher Coe, Head of the Agriculture and Global Clients at AON in Singapore

Nandkumar Vadakepatth, Head of Regional Sustainability Operations at DNV-GL in India

and

Our panel moderator, Jessica Cheam, editor-in-chief at EcoBusiness in Singapore

Thank you for taking the time to be here and share your perspectives around the areas of governance, sustainability, and risk management.

As you know, this summit is a milestone event for the Ayala group. For the first time, we have combined corporate governance, risk management, and sustainability into a unified summit whereas in the past, we would hold three separate gatherings. Holding a unified summit that touches on environmental, social, and governance is a natural progression as it facilitates the paradigm shift we have embraced in the Ayala group in the way we view governance, sustainability, and risk management as interconnected disciplines that should be part and parcel of our overall strategic planning, decision-making, and investment processes.

As you all know, to institutionalize this perspective, we designed a long-term sustainability blueprint that lays out actionable and measurable targets that address critical environmental, social, and governance gaps that the country faces today. We identified marginalization, large untapped potential of our human capital, and irresponsible growth leading to long-term environmental damage as the three critical challenges our group can focus on.

The Ayala Sustainability Blueprint, specifically designed to support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, will enable us to be more deliberate in monitoring and evaluating our sustainability targets and will help us allocate resources to these initiatives more appropriately.

Under the blueprint, we will focus on contributing to the achievement of three pillars where we believe our businesses can generate the most significant and lasting impact. These are: access and inclusivity, productivity and competitiveness, and responsible growth and innovation. Let me discuss this in greater detail by citing examples of our initiatives across the Ayala group in support of these three pillars.

This integrated summit is an excellent platform to start a conversation around ESG---how we can elevate our thinking, enhance our capabilities, and raise our current standards to a level that is widely accepted globally.

We have a full day with a solid set of speakers. I thank the organizers of the event---the Sustainability and Corporate Governance teams led by TG Limcaoco and Mon Hermosura.

Again, a warm welcome to you all and thank you for joining us in this first Ayala Integrated Summit on Corporate Governance, Risk Management, and Sustainability.

Original source: https://www.ayala.com.ph/press-room/press-releases/ayala-chairman-ceo-jaime-augusto-zobel-de-ayalas-opening-remarks-ayala