The money manager’s update to investors was met with ridicule on social media, with one user on X, formerly Twitter, saying the company was taking “the brd out of abrdn”.
Such remarks have become routine for Abrdn, with its chief investment officer, Peter Branner, claiming it had been a victim of “corporate bullying” since the rebrand in 2021.
Investors, on the other hand, may struggle to see the funny side of Bird’s departure.
Shares in Abrdn have plummeted by more than two-fifths in five years, giving it a market value of ￡2.9bn.
It is a significant drop from the asset manager’s ￡11bn price tag when it was created by the merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017.
“It’s been pretty disastrous for shareholders. I wouldn’t say the biggest corporate cock-up in UK history, but it’s certainly been value destroying in a big, big way,” says Ben Yearsley, investment consultant at Fairview Investing and a former Hargreaves Lansdown manager.
The Edinburgh-based firm said it was a mutual decision between its board and chief executive that it was the “right time” for him to depart.
Abrdn is now on the hunt for his successor and will consider external candidates as part of its search for “fresh leadership”, although did not provide a time-frame for the process.
Jason Windsor, Abrdn’s chief financial officer, will temporarily take control of the business as interim group chief executive until the recruitment process is finished.
Mr Windsor only joined the company last October having previously served as chief financial officer of Persimmon Homes and Aviva.
His appointment comes despite the former Morgan Stanley banker coming under fire from investors after the shareholder advisory firm Glass Lewis argued his ￡675,000 salary is too high.
The proxy adviser questioned why Mr Windsor’s salary is 25pc higher than his predecessor’s, Stephanie Bruce.
Critics of Abrdn’s lacklustre performance in recent years point to the rocky integration of Standard Life and Aberdeen’s legacy operations.
They also highlight Bird’s decision to pay through the nose in its ￡1.5bn takeover of Interactive Investor, the UK’s second largest retail investment platform.
One of Bird’s first major decisions on becoming chief executive was to rename Standard Life Aberdeen to Abrdn. He claimed the corporate makeover would be designed to create a “modern, agile, digitally enabled brand” after selling Standard Life to insurer Phoenix Group in February 2021.
However, the move was widely mocked as confusing and nonsensical.
Analysts on Friday suggested that Bird’s exit was driven by divisions with Abrdn’s board over strategic direction.
They draw on previous reports that Bird pitched the idea of carving up Abrdn by selling its struggling asset management business to focus on its platforms for savers and financial advisers.
However, the board is said to have rejected the proposal and instead supported its current turnaround plan to slash ￡150m in annual costs by 2025, Financial News reported.
Any savings from the transformation initiative, which included 500 job cuts, is hoped to bring Abrdn’s investment business back to profitability.
The division has struggled since the demise of Abrdn’s Global Absolute Returns Strategy (Gars) fund, which closed last summer after years of mediocre performance and poor returns for savers.
The fund, which at its peak managed ￡53bn of investors’ money, folded with just ￡1.4bn of assets under management.
Citi analysts on Friday argued that Bird’s departure now reduces the likelihood of a future break up of Abrdn.
Nick Herman of Citi said in an analyst note: “Assuming these reports are correct, we expect the board to appoint someone who shares that same vision for the combined group.”
Citi also noted that interim boss Windsor last week dismissed suggestions of a break-up and insisted that Abrdn’s management is happy with the combined business and already on a path to improvement.
Mandeep Jagpal, vice president of equity research at RBC Capital Markets, welcomed the leadership change as an opportunity for someone to take a “fresh look” at the troubled asset manager.
Investors appeared cheered by Bird’s departure, with shares closing 1.6pc higher on Friday.
In an analyst note, the London-based investment bank said that turning around Abrdn’s fortunes will require growing the company’s investment division rather than selling it off.
However, RBC’s Jagpal said this comeback would need the support of a stronger economy.
High interest rates have weighed down on investors’ risk appetites and resulted in weaker cash flows across the asset management industry.
“The problems of the asset manager sector aren’t confined to Abrdn. They have been the author of a lot of their own misfortune by the ill-fated merger. But there are wider issues in the asset management world,” says Fairview’s Yearsley.
In an update shared on Friday, Abrdn said its current performance shows similar trends to the first three months of 2024, which saw its assets under management increase 3pc to ￡507.7bn.
While Bird’s departure triggered a fresh onslaught of mockery, analysts argue there was unintended genius to the chief executive’s rebrand.
“They [Abrdn] probably got more coverage than they ever thought of in their wildest dreams about rebranding a really dull, boring business,” says Yearsley.
“I don’t think it was deliberate. The unintended consequence was that everybody suddenly heard of Abrdn and how the new business was spelt, even if everyone’s taking the p–-.”
