Abrdn

Abrdn plc (stylised as ‘abrdn’, disemvowelling of "Aberdeen"), formerly Standard Life Aberdeen plc, is a United Kingdom-based global investment company headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

It is the largest active asset manager in the UK, with investments in equities, multi-asset, fixed income, liquidity, sovereign wealth funds, real estate and private markets. In July 2021 the company changed its name from Standard Life Aberdeen to Abrdn. The registered office of the company is at George Street, Edinburgh.

History
In March 2017, Standard Life reached an agreement to merge with Aberdeen Asset Management, in an all-share merger, subject to shareholder approval. It was announced that the merged company was to be named Standard Life Aberdeen. This was achieved by Standard Life being renamed Standard Life Aberdeen on 14 August 2017.

In May 2017, Standard Life acquired the loss-making AXA Portfolio Services for £31 million. This company housed AXA Elevate, the investment platform from Axa. At the time of acquisition the platform held £9.8 billion of client assets, boosting the total level of assets held on Standard Life platforms to £36.4 billion.

In October 2017, it was reported that there had been withdrawals of $10 billion from Standard Life Aberdeen's mutual funds over the prior year.

In February 2018, Standard Life Aberdeen announced its intention to sell the Standard Life insurance business to Phoenix for £3.2 billion, marking a transition away from its insurance roots to asset management.

In October 2018 it was announced that Sir Gerry Grimstone would step down as chairman on 1 January 2019 and be succeeded by Sir Douglas Flint.

In June 2020 it was announced that Keith Skeoch would step down as chief executive and be succeeded by Stephen Bird: he took up the role of chief executive-designate in July 2020, and was formally appointed as chief executive in September 2020.

In September 2020 it was announced that the company would acquire a 60% interest in Tritax, one of Europe's leading logistics real estate fund managers.

In February 2021, the company announced that it was considering selling or abandoning use of the Standard Life name. In April 2021, the company announced that – having sold the Standard Life Insurance business to Phoenix in 2018 and having sold the Standard Life name to Phoenix in 2021 – it would be rebranding as abrdn. The new brand, pronounced "Aberdeen" and developed by the branding agency Wolff Olins, was criticised as difficult to pronounce, but was said by chief executive Stephen Bird to reflect a "clarity of focus". Part of the motivation was that the Aberdeen.com domain was owned by another business. The change of name and the rebranding took place in July 2021. The name was met with widespread ridicule and was the butt of online jokes. An online poll of investors described the rebrand as an "act of corporate insanity". In 2024, Peter Branner, Abrdn's chief investment officer, accused the media of being "childish" for ridiculing the disemvowelled name and said that the company was a victim of "corporate bullying".

In March 2021, the company announced its intention to sell Parmenion, an investment and technology solutions business that supports financial advice firms, to Preservation Capital Partners. The completion of the sale was announced in July 2021.

In December 2021, Abrdn announced that it would acquire Interactive Investor, a British subscription-based retail investment services company with over 400,000 customers. The £1.49 billion purchase was completed in May 2022.

On 1 March 2022, Stephen Bird, the chief executive of Abrdn, announced that the company deemed Russia and Belarus "non-investable", that they were acting to reduce their holdings in the two countries, and that they would not be investing in those countries for the foreseeable future.

In June 2023, the company announced that it was restructuring its financial planning arm, splitting into two models – the 'financial consultant' model and the 'regional advice' model.

In July 2023, the company announced that its Global Absolute Return Strategies fund would no longer operate as a standalone fund, having seen AUM fall from an all-time high of almost £30 billion in 2016 to around £1.4 billion at the time it was closed. Abrdn CEO Stephen Bird later stated in the firm's results that this was "the right thing to do".

In January 2024, it was widely reported that Abrdn were to cut around 10% of its workforce of 5,000 people as part of a £150M restructuring plan. On 24 January 2024, the plans to cut around 500 jobs were confirmed.

In April 2024, Abrdn completed the sale of its European-headquartered private equity business (with £7.4bn assets under management) to Nasdaq-listed Patria Investments for up to £100m. The proposed sale was first announced in October 2023 and followed the sale of its US-headquartered private equity business to High Vista Strategies in 2023.

In May 2024, Abrdn announced that CEO Stephen Bird would step down after four years in post. Jason Windsor, the current CFO, was appointed as interim group CEO while the board searches for Bird's successor.

Operations
Abrdn is headquartered in Edinburgh, with operations across the globe. , the company has £535 billion assets under management and administration. It has over 5,000 employees globally and over 1 million shareholders.

Abrdn has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange. It is also listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI), including the DJSI World, which ranks the world's leading sustainability-driven publicly listed companies.