Abrdn chief executive Stephen Bird says he has no regrets about the controversial rebrand of Standard Life Aberdeen.
“I would 100% do it again - you’ve no idea how many people regard it as a good thing,” he told Financial News.
While dropping the vowels was met with ridicule across social media when the change was announced at the end of April last year, Bird said it has since made the group better recognised - pointing to brand research that shows abrdn has recently risen to become the second most recognised asset manager behind BlackRock.
He explained that offloading the Standard Life brand to Phoenix was a key part of the financial services group's new strategy.
“What I inherited was a mostly insurance-based asset manager, but with deep competence and good people - what we are shaping is a business that can grow in the 21st century.”
Bird has carried on his predecessor Martin Gilbert's eye for a deal, snapping up tech-led wealth manager Exo Investing last August, followed by investing insights platform Finimize in November, and then paying £1.49bn for Interactive Investor in December.
“The reason we bought Interactive is because they are the market challenger," he said in the interview. "There was no point buying a conventional wealth manager, because the guys leave with their clients; it also wouldn’t advance me from a technology point of view.”
Bird admitted that the first 16 months in the job required him to make difficult decisions, such as cutting the dividend by a third, which was a risk, since the Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life merger had seen the share price almost halve.
He said: “We were peeling money off the balance sheet, which is not prudent - I can’t stand here and say we are careful investors and paying an unsustainable dividend.”
The group cut its bonuses for some staff, but has promised colleagues that once the firm starts improving they will reap the rewards of his initial moves.
Bird joined Standard Life Aberdeen in September 2020, taking over from Keith Skeoch, who had previously shared chief executive duties with Martin Gilbert since the merger in 2017.
“I knew the story had been that the merger had not fulfilled its potential and it was really struggling - mergers of equals with two CEOs never result in fast change," he commented. “I was worried about the fact they had lost Lloyds; I wondered how that could happen.”
Bird said that he spoke to the group's biggest investors to avoid further fall out, which led to him selling the Standard Life brand to Phoenix, while negotiating a 10-year partnership between the two firms.
He added: “We lost Lloyds, so I went to our biggest client, made them happy and renewed that relationship; I took that risk off the table.”
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