SIXTY is the retirement age in Ayala Group and in other large, professionally-run companies.

So it came as a surprise to market observers when the Zobels announced posthaste the other day that they were replacing the 46-year-old president of Ayala Land, Jaime Ayala, with Antonino Aquino, an old Ayala Land hand who is turning 61 this year, during the April 1 stockholders? meeting.

Posthaste because Ayala Land had already submitted the definitive information statement to the regulators and mailed the same to the shareholders, with Ayala being renominated to the presidency.

Ayala?s career path within Ayala Land is remarkable, given his being an outsider and his having zero experience in land development and mall management.

Despite his surname, ?Jim? Ayala is not related to the Zobels; his initial and main connection to the Makati landlords is that he attended Harvard about the same time as his future boss, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, having graduated with MBA honors in 1988, a year ahead of JAZA.

Ayala then went on to work for the consulting giant McKinsey and Co. for 19 years, and posted in the United States, Mexico, Tokyo and Hong Kong before being enticed to join Ayala Land, initially as executive vice president in January 2004.

Six months later, Ayala was already on top of the Ayala Land totem pole, succeeding the retiring Francisco Licuanan as president and chief executive.

There are speculations as to why Ayala, with only five years in the position (in contrast, Gerardo Ablaza Jr., 55, held the Globe Telecom presidency for 11 years before being replaced), is being promoted upstairs to the parent company, Ayala Corp., as a senior managing director, alongside Ablaza.

The chatter from the Ayala Group grapevine is that Ayala had engaged in a disastrous forward contracts for steel bars during the commodity crisis, only to be blindsided months later when steel prices suddenly U-turned and headed south.

There apparently was even a board-directed investigation into the steel purchases, but the losses were apparently papered over, with Ayala Land reporting banner results for 2008.

Given the market downturn now stretching up to perhaps next year, Ayala?s exit could even prove to be a blessing in disguise.

Heard through the grapevine

Winston Garcia has decided to pull out the estimated $600 million in overseas assets of the Government Service Insurance System from Citigroup and hand over the management of its global investment program to JP Morgan instead.

The transfer came after the US government had taken a 36 percent stake in Citigroup.

Citigroup had won the GSIS mandate in November 2007, beating JP Morgan and State Street.

(Web site: www.cocktales.ph; E-mail: cocktales_mst@pldtdsl.net)