Business 5 min read By Alice Ashford
Ayala Chief Cezar Consing Defends Keeping Conglomerate Together as Profit Falls
Ayala Corporation's first non-family CEO is resisting the global trend of corporate break-ups, arguing that a diversified portfolio spanning banking, property, telecoms and energy can still create value even as first-half profit drops 7%.
Ayala Corporation is betting that a diversified conglomerate can still outperform the sum of its parts, even as investors and rival boards across the West embrace break-ups. Cezar Consing, the first non-family chief executive in the Philippine group's history, has told Fortune that he intends to keep the sprawling business together and demand more from its individual units rather than spin them off.
The strategy runs against a decade of corporate fashion. General Electric split into three companies in 2024, Johnson & Johnson spun off its consumer health arm as Kenvue, and activist investors routinely press boards to separate anything deemed non-core. Analysts have long pointed to a «conglomerate discount», in which stock markets value diversified firms at less than the combined worth of their divisions.
Consing's argument is that Asia's conglomerates remain essential where business infrastructure is thin. In Southeast Asia, groups such as Ayala have served as foundational pillars of emerging economies in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, helping to plug gaps in markets, finance and services that would otherwise slow growth.
Ayala's recent numbers show the pressure. The group reported net income of 22.1 billion Philippine pesos, or about $359 million, in the first six months of 2026, a 7% decline from a year earlier. Profit at Ayala Land, one of its most important divisions, fell 19%. The results followed record profits in the previous year.
Consing, who had retired after running BPI, Southeast Asia's oldest bank, was called back by chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala when then-CEO Fernando Zobel de Ayala resigned for health reasons. He describes the decision as an emergency, telling Fortune he accepted the same day and started work the next morning.
His response has been to tighten fiscal discipline rather than dismantle the portfolio. Drawing on his early career as a JPMorgan investment banker in Singapore and Hong Kong, he now sets explicit return requirements for business units, including higher dividends. «If we don't extract value from them, how can we remain relevant?» he said, arguing that the parent company had previously been too selfless in seeding capital.
Ayala's portfolio spans banking through BPI, real estate through Ayala Land, telecoms through Globe, energy through ACEN and logistics through AC Logistics. Consing points to cross-group projects as evidence that diversity can work. When the group pushed into electric vehicles, he assembled a board of chief executives from nearly every major company, assigning Ayala Land to install chargers in its condominiums and malls, ACEN to supply clean power, Globe to connect charging stations and BPI to finance car purchases.
That effort made ACMobility, the automotive arm, the country's third-largest car distributor with 10.9% of the market, even as it posted a loss of 57 million pesos, about $925,000, in the first half after spending on marketing and charging infrastructure. AC Logistics also draws a fair share of its business from sister companies.
Consing concedes that synergy is not automatic. «The temptation is always to do what's in front of you,» he said, adding that employees are being asked to occasionally look sideways at opportunities elsewhere in the group.
Founded in 1834 by Domingo Roxas and Antonio de Ayala, when the Philippines was still under Spanish colonial rule, Ayala began as a distillery before moving into infrastructure with the Ayala Bridge over Manila's Pasig River in 1872 and the country's first tramcar service in 1888. Since the 1950s, real estate and banking have remained its two constant pillars.
«I look at Ayala more as an idea,» Consing said. «We've remained relevant because we have been able to go in and out of businesses that matter for the times.» For now, that idea involves keeping the group intact and making its parts work harder for the centre.
