Scotland’s biggest fund manager, abrdn, has announced the appointment of a new chief executive who will be expected to help the firm bounce back from recent reverses amid challenging times in the sector.
Edinburgh-based abrdn said Jason Windsor had been confirmed in post after serving as interim chief executive for three months.
The performance of the former investment banker will be followed closely in Scotland. Abrdn employs more than 1,800 people in the country out of a group total of 4,600.
Shares in the firm have fallen around 20% this year.
Mr Windsor took on the job temporarily in May following the abrupt departure of Stephen Bird, who spent less than four years in charge.
Abdrn said then that Mr Bird had led the strategic repositioning of the company as it moved to respond to changes in the market.
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Groups that specialise in ‘active’ investment management in the way abrdn does have been losing ground for years to firms that run ‘passive’ funds designed to track the performance of stock market indices. The fees on these are lower than those charged by stock pickers.
Mr Bird moved to reduce abrdn’s reliance on fund management by growing its share of the market to provide platforms on which advisers could manage the investments of clients.
He also master-minded the £1.5bn acquisition of the Interactive Investor business, which has more than 400,000 customers. These can use the firm’s technology to build and manage their portfolios, which may include abrdn funds.
The platform and Interactive Investor operations performed well in the first half of the current financial year.
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However, abrdn has faced persistent challenges in the fund management business amid withdrawals of funds by clients and questions about the group’s investment record.
While Mr Bird tried to streamline the fund management business and to improve its performance, the timing of his departure suggested abrdn chaiman Sir Douglas Flint felt there was still lots to be done.
One of the challenges the group has faced has been the derision provoked by Mr Bird’s decision to adopt the abrdn name in 2021, in place of Standard Life Aberdeen.
Mr Windsor insists that there is significant headroom for growth in each of what he calls the three core businesses.
He will have to show that the group is making progress fairly rapidly to silence calls for it to be broken up or sold.
Other active fund managers such as Jupiter have suffered from funds outflows in recent months.
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However, abrdn appears to have had a troubled existence since it was formed following the £11bn merger of pensions giant Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017.
Directors of the enlarged group decided to focus on fund management, which they decided offered better growth prospects than the pensions business.
The decision seemed to backfire after the group saw clients withdraw billions of pounds worth of funds as its investment performance came under attack.
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