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3 hours ago
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C’mon Abrdn, abndn the silly name, urged this column and many others when Standard Life Aberdeen decided to shorten its name to that of the granite city, just without three-quarters of the vowels. Now – four years and one chief executive later – the nonsense has been stopped. Aberdeen it is, albeit the group still can’t manage an upper case “A”.
“One of the easiest decisions I have ever had to make,” said its new boss, Jason Windsor, undoing the handiwork of his predecessor, Stphn Brd. One doesn’t doubt it.
The original guff about having a “modern, agile and digitally enabled brand” was always likely to collide with the reality that a name that causes the reader to pause for breath doesn’t work unless you’re sending a text message.
Abrdn executives seem to have spent half their time explaining the pronunciation, or inviting fresh ridicule by grumbling about the wicked media’s “childish jokes”.
The other excuse, back in 2021, was that Scotland’s oil capital had already bagged the relevant website domain names, obliging the company to do something different.
That supposedly insurmountable obstacle has now been removed by becoming, in full, “aberdeen group”, which should not have required great genius. Sir Douglas Flint, the soon-to-depart chair who is normally a plain speaker, could have saved a lot of bother by insisting on common sense at the outset.
Still, at least the numbers are looking better after years of disappointment for shareholders. The recent cost-cutting should be more lasting than the adventures in removing vowels.
Operating profits, after normal adjustments, rose 2% to £255m despite lower revenues. It was the group’s first profits growth for three years. It was also possible to glimpse, for the first time in ages, how this three-legged financial services creation might be able to move forwards in a straight line.
The group is the product of a grand 2017 merger that was a mashup of free-wheeling Aberdeen and sedate Standard Life but has changed immeasurably since then, notably via the 2018 sale of the insurance businesses to Phoenix.
In today’s form, Aberdeen comprises a traditional fund management business, albeit one that must specialise in fields such as emerging markets and real estate to avoid the giant US index trackers; a service platform for independent financial advisers; and Interactive Investor, the retail platform for DIY retail investors that was acquired on Bird’s watch for £1.5bn.
The mix is now styled as a “wealth and investments group” and, despite its oddness, all three units ought to be capable of growth and staying under the same roof.
In his other eye-catching move, Windsor, promoted from chief financial officer a year after arrival from Aviva, started by setting a target for operating profits – £300m in 2026, or about a fifth better than the 2024 outcome – which read as a statement of confidence. The shares rose 7%, a rare experience for investors in recent years.
We’ve been here before with this company, of course. In his time, ex-Citigroup Bird was also presented as a new broom. But ditching the distraction of a ridiculous name is a credibility-enhancing start.
Other companies take note: if you have to ask how to pronounce a new name, you’ve got the wrong one. The only exception is Relx, the brilliantly performing (and two syllable) analytics business that is now the UK’s fifth largest listed company.
