By Jenniffer B. Austria

AYALA Corp., the country?s oldest conglomerate, yesterday announced a major shakeup among the top executives of Ayala Land, Manila Water and Globe Telecom.

Under the reorganization, Manila Water president Antonino Aquino will be the new president of Ayala Land, replacing Jaime Ayala, who will return to Ayala Corp. as senior managing director.

The shakeup will also move Globe Telecom chief executive Gerardo Ablaza Jr. back to the parent company to oversee the group?s interests in telecommunications and banking. He will be replaced by Globe?s deputy chief executive Ernest Cu, who is also president and chief executive of SPI Technologies.

Jose Rene Almendras, group director of business at Manila Water, will succeed Aquino at the utility company.

Ayala Corp. chairman and chief executive Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala said the top-level changes would take effect after the annual stockholders? meetings of the respective companies.

?Ayala Corp. takes pride in its deep bench of senior executives. We like to provide them with opportunities for continuous growth and take a proactive approach to preparing our teams for new or changing value-creation opportunities,? Zobel said.

?The business environment continues to shift, and we would like to adapt to these changes in a more progressive way. It is in this spirit that we are pleased to announce several movements in our senior executive group that will strengthen the holding company?s executive team while enhancing the trajectory of three of our important operating companies, namely Ayala Land, Globe Telecom and Manila Water.?

Under Ayala?s leadership, Ayala Land achieved 130-percent revenue growth and 80-percent earnings growth over five years, Zobel said. It had increased residential revenue 2.5 times and doubled mall and office gross leasable area with new malls and office campuses.

But it was also under his watch that Ayala Land endured scrutiny caused by the Glorietta 2 blast that killed 11 people in the mall.

Zobel also credited Ablaza for the ?unprecedented growth and profitability? at Globe Telecom, which went from being the fourth ranked mobile service provider with only 97,000 subscribers to the second largest full-service telecommunications provider with a subscriber base of 25 million.

Ablaza would bring his expertise to the new microfinance bank that Globe, Bank of the Philippine Islands and Ayala Corp. were forming, Zobel said.

Citiseconline president Dino Bate said that the surprise executive shakeup was a response to changing market conditions.

Many companies, not only the Ayala group, were now reviewing their strategies given the expected slowdown due to the global financial crisis, Bate said.

In 2008, Ayala Corp.?s net income plunged 50 percent to P8.1 billion from P16.2 billion in 2007 as the impact of the financial crisis and lower gains from share sales weighed on earnings.

Equity earnings from operating units dropped to P7.8 billion during the period, while capital gains from share sales declined 63 percent to P2.7 billion from P7.4 billion in 2007.

Globe Telecom, owned by Ayala Corp. and Singapore Telecom, saw net income tumble 15 percent to P11.276 billion in 2008 from a year ago as service revenues dipped slightly to P62.9 billion from P63.2 billion. With Roderick T. dela Cruz