ING FINEX CFO Of The Year: This 'serial transformer' talks to numbers

MANILA, Philippines - “I’m very ordinary,” the petite lady in a power suit humbly admits as she tries to dodge the “Super CFO” title that goes with winning the 2009 ING FINEX CFO of the Year.

In retrospect, there is nothing ordinary about Sherisa ‘Baby’ Nuesa, currently managing director of Ayala Corp. on secondment to an Ayala Land affiliate. Women in the corporate ladder usually had to trade-off personal likability for professional success, but not this Baby.

Her disarming personality showed when she was a 15-year-old high school student who captured the heart of a law student nine years her senior, now her husband of more than 35 years. The daughter of a fingerprint expert at the National Bureau of Investigation and an accountant, Nuesa was raised in an environment where numbers are “friends” and fraud and greed are “enemies.” Her father, who was once head of the NBI’s Clearance Division, was strict and straight, and lived a simple and honest life. Her mother was diligent and hard- working.

Her parents’ strong work ethic and values rubbed off on Nuesa who discovered she had a knack for numbers and took up accounting at the Far Eastern University, where she graduated Summa Cum Laude in 1974. “I found out that numbers could talk to me,” she says.

Yet far from leading the humdrum routine work of bean counters, Nuesa is a round peg in a square hole who fights mediocrity. In college, she took to the streets of ‘U Belt’ (University Belt) during the First Quarter Storm and experienced being tear gassed and chased by the police along Recto Avenue. She carried this activism in the Ayala Group where her career spans 35 years with four initial public offerings (IPOs) to her credit and a string of “firsts.”

“One of the advantages of being in the Ayala Group is that you get the ‘Ayala wiring’. This means you’re given the opportunity to be exposed to several industries, but more importantly is the alignment of values. The disadvantage is we usually find it hard to disengage from work. It’s easy to love Ayala,” she says with pride.

Whenever she moves to an Ayala subsidiary and tackles a new challenge, Nuesa brings her passion in a mission: to take the company public. This includes Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI), Cebu Holdings Inc., Cebu Property Ventures Development Corp., Manila Water Company, and Integrated Micro-Electronics, Inc. (IMI).

“IPO is the magic word for me as it allows me to sell the country’s story as well,” she says.

At IMI, the electronics manufacturing services arm of the Ayala Group, she took on her first major role as corporate strategist of a global company. As its CFO and concurrent Chief Administrative Officer, she was part of the senior team that engineered the turnaround of the company from the effects of the 2008 financial storm and led IMI’s successful listing on the Philippine Stock Exchange by way of introduction in January 2010 (its IPO has been deferred due to the continuing global stress). She also led the team that acquired PSiTechnologies, a 30-year-old power semiconductor company. 

While some CFOs would demonstrate a company’s dramatic turnaround by the numbers, Nuesa talks about transformation stories. In Manila Water, reputed as one of the most awarded and celebrated success stories in Philippine corporate history, she shows off her nurturing side.

“I’ve seen the financial success these companies bring to Ayala, but the one on Manila Water is one that transformed many lives,” she stresses. “I’ve witnessed how places became cleaner with water, how mothers are now able to bathe their children, how people saved time from lining up with their pails to fetch water from a single faucet.”

Coming from ALI, one of the country’s biggest real estate companies, Nuesa moved to a privatized utility which has been losing 51 percent of its water supply in 2000 due to leaks and pilferage. “When I left the company in 2008, our non-revenue water (NRW) was already below 20 percent and the company was in very solid financial state,” she adds.

In transforming the water concessionaire, Nuesa said the management team realized early on that it was not purely a numbers game. “A huge portion of our customer base lives in the economically depressed areas of society. They are at a bigger disadvantage if they don’t have access to a basic need. They paid five times the current rates, had fewer hours of water supply, and were at the mercy of vendors,” she explains.

As a considerable amount of capital investment is needed to replace old pipes and establish connections in the unserved communities, the biggest challenge was foisted upon its CFO. Nuesa took the lead in Manila Water’s successful IPO in 2006 – hailed as “Deal of the Year” by award-giving bodies, and the country’s first peso corporate bond issued right after the 2008 global financial crisis. In addition, Nuesa also takes pride in arranging for a $3-million grant from the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation that funded water connections for the poor. Manila Water is now hailed as one of the successful public-private partnerships in the world.

Nuesa credits the major part of its success to then Manila Water boss, Antonino Aquino, and the former employees of state-run Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) who stayed with the company after it was privatized. “It’s a prime example of ordinary people delivering extraordinary results, given the right leader. The story of Manila Water is truly one of organizational transformation,” she adds.

Now back to Ayala Corp. where she started as financial analyst 35 years ago, Nuesa continues to be a transformational executive and a staunch activist for corporate governance. She was inducted last June as a Fellow of the Institute of Corporate Directors. In between her juggling work at Ayala, she managed to finish her thesis for a Master in Business Administration at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, which she put on hold when she had a baby at 22. “Going back to school was more of a closure for me,” she says. She is also a sought-after speaker in local and regional conferences.

Beyond the corporate walls, she continues to bring small miracles. She is part of a Family Encounter community in Ayala Alabang village that runs a highly successful soup kitchen that feeds 300 children.

“Everybody can make the numbers, but the challenge is to make a difference,” the serial transformer says.