The UK asset manager has announced a rebrand to Aberdeen with the release of its full-year results for 2024, which pushed shares up sharply. In doing so the Scottish firm hopes to draw a line under the criticism and online mockery after the change of name to “abrdn” in 2021, citing a “pragmatic” need to “remove distractions”.
The name change was announced by Aberdeen’s CEO Jason Windsor, who took over from Stephen Bird in 2024, the executive who initiated the name change from Standard Life Aberdeen in 2021.
Windsor said in the earnings release that the company will use lower-case “aberdeen” as the principal trading identity for the investments and adviser businesses, a change from “abrdn”. The company’s logo remains lower case, and the word “aberdeen” is used in the corporate website and annual report. The stock exchange ticker will remain ABDN and the London Stock Exchange is still listing the FTSE 250 company as “ABRDN PLC”.
“This is a group to be proud of, with a promising future. We will deliver by looking forward with confidence and removing distractions. To that end, we are changing our name to aberdeen group. This is a pragmatic decision marking a new phase for the organization, as we focus on delivering for our customers, people and shareholders,” Windsor said.
He noted that the company will not be making any changes to subsidiary legal entity names or the names of underlying funds “at this time”.
Shares in Aberdeen ABDN are up 11% after the release of the earnings report, which revealed a move from £6 million in losses in 2023 to a 2024 pre-tax profit of £251 million. The company has also reduced its net outflows from £13.9 billion in 2023 to £6.1 billion in 2024.
The company dropped out of the FTSE 100 in September 2023 after the quarterly reshuffle, having returned to the elite index in late 2022. Over five years the shares have fallen around 33%, excluding dividends, a period that covers most of Stephen Bird’s tenure as chief executive.
Aberdeen’s Tough Few Years: Performance and Outflows
Michael Born, manager research analyst at Morningstar, comments that Aberdeen has been experiencing a tough few years with poor performance across several equity franchises, most notably in emerging markets and Asia, where it has suffered continued negative performance in a region facing poor investor sentiment.
“Issues around talent retention and turning that performance picture around have been at the core of the leadership’s mission over these past few years, and particularly under the new chief executive Jason Windsor,” he says.
“There has been a continued improvement in performance, with 60% of assets under management outperforming benchmarks over three years (up from just over 50% two years ago), and outflows in general are much stymied from their trough in 2022.
“While performance woes and outflows continue in certain franchises, at a group level we have seen net inflows over the recent few quarters, which we now expect the company to reach on an annual basis at some point this year. Meanwhile, turnover in the investment team has also decreased, since this is very much related to the issues around performance and flows.”
Vowel Movement: Abrdn Rebrands Again
The rebrand received its fair share of jokes in the press after the 2021 rebrand, and the story was picked up again in 2024.
Last year, Peter Branner, chief investment officer at the business, hit out at the criticism, telling Financial News: “I understand that corporate bullying to some extent is part of the game with the press, even though it’s a little childish to keep hammering the missing vowels in our name.
“Would you do that with an individual? How would you look at a person who makes fun of your name day in, day out? It’s probably not ethical to do it.
“But apparently with companies it is different.”
Following Branner’s comments, Financial News joked that the business should “gt ovr it”, while the City AM newspaper referenced the mockery on its front page, with an “aplgy” to the business.
The author or authors do not own shares in any securities mentioned in this article. Find out about Morningstar's editorial policies.
