The Board’s Agenda: Building Businesses That Enable People to Thrive

With the Integrated Summit guest speakers are Ayala group board directors Cesar Purisima, Mariana Zobel de Ayala, Jaime Alfonso Zobel de Ayala, Rizalina Mantaring, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Bong Consing, Fernando Zobel de Ayala, and Jaime Z. Urquijo; Ayala Corporate Secretary Franchette Acosta; and AFI President Tony Lambino

In its first in-person staging since the pandemic in 2020, the 6th Integrated Corporate Governance, Risk Management, and Sustainability Summit was held on November 5 with a theme anchored on Ayala’s purpose, “Building Businesses That Enable People to Thrive.” The summit convened board directors, chief executives, and senior leaders of the Ayala group to reinforce their commitment to the Sustainability agenda.

Providing insights from their first-hand experiences, distinguished speakers shared strategies and frameworks to strengthen, implement, monitor, and report on corporate governance, risk management, and sustainability.

There is a tremendous challenge for companies and their leadership and operating teams to clearly demonstrate the tangible value that sustainability brings to the table. Boards are entrusted with the unenviable task of balancing diverse and, perhaps, competing interests as they properly discharge their fiduciary duty to their stakeholders and shareholders.

FERNANDO ZOBEL DE AYALA
Board Director, Ayala Corporation

The commitment to implement strategy and vision, including risk management and sustainability through a strong governance framework is one the Ayala group possesses and continuously nurtures.

ATTY. FRANCHETTE M. ACOSTA
Chief Legal Officer and
Chief Compliance Officer
Ayala Corporation

We’re dealing with large, systemic crisis and that needs sustained solutions. [...] So, engaging government, and actually proactively pushing for supporting legislations will be very important.

MARK HARPER
Group Head of Sustainability,
John Swire & Sons (HK)

Social impact is not just about individual achievement; it’s about creating economic development and systemic change.

JANE LEU
Founder and CEO, Smarter Good

People are finally starting to realize that there is no business on a dead planet and there is a huge opportunity to build resilience to unleash innovations and to create new markets.

PAUL POLMAN
Former CEO, Unilever, and author,
Net Positive: How Courageous
Companies Thrive by Giving More
Than They Take

The key thing is [...] finding new ways to define a problem so it’s actually solvable. You need to have people who are going to ask questions. You need people who are allowed to ask questions, who will sit there and not do business as usual and ask:
‘What are we doing about it?’

PROF. CHAD MICHAEL BRIGGS
Academic Program Director, Master in
Disaster and Crisis Management
Asian Institute of Management

Once people work out how to make money from climate change, there will be a fundamental change to the way people do business. And once governments work out a way to tax carbon, there will be fundamental changes to the way people do business.

PROF. ADAM SWITZER
Principal Investigator
Earth Observatory of Singapore