LESS than four years after a radical rebrand that saw the company drop most vowels from its name, Abrdn has bowed to derision and is renaming itself Aberdeen Group as chief executive officer Jason Windsor seeks to revive the flailing asset manager.
The volte face comes as the firm contends with ongoing outflows and even after it insisted as recently as January that it would stick with the widely mocked name that was introduced by previous CEO Stephen Bird.
“This is a pragmatic decision marking a new phase for the organisation”, Windsor said in a statement on Tuesday (Mar 4), adding the company wants to remove “distractions”. The executive said his firm aims to become the “UK’s leading wealth & investments group.” It also gave a new set of targets, including a goal to boost adjusted operating profit to at least £300 million (S$513 million) in 2026, which would be a minimum 18 per cent from its 2024 base.
The Edinburgh-based company has endured a few tumultuous years of outflows followed by successive rounds of job cuts. A year ago, Abrdn announced plans for another wave of job reductions to rein in costs and said it would eliminate roughly 500 roles, or 10 per cent of its workforce, as part of a programme it said would save at least £150 million a year.
The firm’s shares, which hit a record low earlier this year, soared as much as 15 per cent in early London trading, their biggest intraday gain since March 2020.
The market so far hasn’t believed in Abrdn’s “ability to get costs out or to have a strategy for growth,” Panmure Liberum analysts led by Rae Maile wrote in a note to clients. “That view is challenged today.”
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Wealth focus
The Scottish money manager stressed on Tuesday that it wants to grow its retail broker platform interactive investor as well as its adviser business, which caters to financial planners. Abrdn’s asset-management unit will be focusing on real assets, credit and specialist equities.
Overall net outflows in 2024 slowed sharply to £1.1 billion from £17.6 billion the year earlier. Assets under management rose 3 per cent to £511 billion.
Explaining the previous rebranding in 2021, Bird said that abrdn was “a unique ownable asset” and makes it easier for people to search for the company online, as well as avoiding copyright issues because Aberdeen is also a city, a football club and a university.
Windsor, who was named CEO last year after his predecessor stepped down, has replaced the head of Abrdn’s investments unit as part of a wider leadership overhaul. Last week, the company named Siobhan Boylan, who is currently chief financial officer of NatWest Group’s private banking arm, as its permanent finance chief.
The company also announced on Tuesday that it’s kicking off the search for a successor to Douglas Flint, who has been chairman since 2019. BLOOMBERG
