Abrdn CEO Bird suddenly resigns after four difficult years By Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) – Stephen Bird, CEO of British fund manager Abdrn, said on Friday he was resigning after a tumultuous four-year tenure that was marred by massive outflows of client cash and a controversial rebrand.

Abrdn said in a statement that the board and Bird agreed it was “the right time to hand over the reins to the team.” The company added that finance chief Jason Windsor will take on the interim role effective Friday.

It said it would begin a formal search process for a permanent CEO that would consider external candidates.

Abrdn shares were up 1% in early trading.

Abrdn has been struggling to turn its fortunes around after customers withdrew their cash for years, a struggle that was further highlighted when it fell from Britain’s blue-chip stock index last year.

Bird has tried to revive abdrn’s performance by cutting jobs, narrowing the scope of the fund and expanding into mass-market investments through the 2022 acquisition of online platform Interactive Investors.

The company made headlines in 2021 after a widely mocked rebrand that dropped a vowel from its name, renaming it ‘abrdn’. standard life (Ron:) Aberdeen.

Abrdn said Bird would begin a 12-month notice period and was being treated as a “good leaver” under the terms of the contract. This means he will be paid normally and still be entitled to any unearned bonuses.

Bird is expected to go on garden leave at the end of June after completing the handover of responsibilities with Windsor, the statement added. The Edinburgh-based company appointed Windsor as CFO last July.

Active fund managers like abrdn have struggled in recent years to compete with low-cost index-tracking rivals and investment options tied to soaring central bank rates, but the firm reported improved first-quarter performance.

Transactions and net flows for the second quarter to date have trended similarly to the previous three-month period, abrdn said. Last month, net inflows from January to March reached 800 million pounds ($1.02 billion), while assets under management rose 3% to 507.7 billion pounds.

(1 dollar = 0.7880 pounds)