Clients have pulled billions from a Scottish financial services heavyweight as it begins major cuts this year.
It came as fund manager and wealth specialist Abrdn saw its pre-tax loss shrink to £6 million for last year, reducing from a £612 million loss.
The firm said last month it plans to cut around 500 jobs as part of a sweeping overhaul to save the investment firm up to £150 million in costs.
The Edinburgh-based company, which rebranded from Standard Life Aberdeen in 2021, said the cuts will primarily take place this year and be completed by the end of 2025.
READ MORE: All jobs lost as Scottish haulage firm ceases trading
It also reported £13.9 billion in net outflows during 2023 as many clients withdrew funds.
This partly led to a 4% fall in net operating revenue to £1.4 billion for the year.
Meanwhile, the firm said operating expenses decreased by 4% reflecting management actions to reduce costs.
It also said it witnessed £152 million of restructuring and corporate transaction expenses over the past year.
Stephen Bird, chief executive officer of Abrdn, said: “Over the past three years we have reshaped the business to fit the modern investment landscape.
“We now have content and distribution aligned to the products and services clients need, and we are better positioned for future growth.
“We are taking action to rebuild and grow profit in our investments business.
“We have sharpened our focus on improving investment performance, streamlined our fund range, reduced costs by £102 million in 2023, exceeding our £75 million target and we announced a new cost-saving programme of at least £150 million on January 24.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel