Standard Life Aberdeen completes merger
Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management completed their merger on Monday and became Standard Life Aberdeen, also confirming the make-up of the new combined board.
Aberdeen Asset Management
317.60p
17:09 11/08/17
Abrdn
155.20p
16:40 03/05/24
Financial Services
14,418.79
16:54 03/05/24
FTSE 100
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16:59 03/05/24
FTSE 250
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17:00 03/05/24
FTSE 350
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FTSE All-Share
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Life Insurance
5,897.35
16:54 03/05/24
SL's Gerry Grimstone is chairman and Aberdeen's Simon Troughton his deputy, guiding co-chief executives Keith Skeoch and Martin Gilbert, with Rod Paris as chief investment officer and Bill Rattray as chief financial officer.
SL's Luke Savage will remain employed to provide support to Rattray through to the publication of the 2017 full-year results and will leave the company at the end of February.
Barry O'Dwyer from SL will remain in his role as chief of pensions and savings, while Andrew Laing will remain as head of integration and Hugh Young will remain as head of Asia.
Kevin Parry, John Devine, Melanie Gee, Lynne Peacock and Martin Pike all remain as non-executive directors.
The company epic ticker code was changed from SL to SLA from 0800 BST on Monday, with the shares climbing 2% in early trading.
Hailing the day as a "major milestone" in the history of both companies, Grimstone said: "As we move forward, the Standard Life Aberdeen board remains committed to maintaining its high values of stewardship and effective governance, while putting our clients' and customers' interests at the heart of what we do."
Skeoch added: "Our leadership team is in place and we have full business readiness from day one. Our people have worked exceptionally well together to complete the merger on schedule and we would like to thank them for this. The co-operation and collaboration we have witnessed bodes well in helping us create a world-class investment company for our clients, shareholders and people."
And Gilbert chimed in: "As ever our priority remains the delivery of strong investment performance and the highest level of client service. The merger deepens and broadens our investment capabilities and gives us a stronger and more diverse range of investment management skills as well as significant scale across asset classes and geographies. We believe this will enable us to deliver an even better proposition and service to our enlarged client base."
Following the broadly in line underlying results and marking to market, broker Numis updated its forecasts with full year earnings per share expected to come in at 31.5p, up from 29.8p, and 2018 EPS up to 32.5p from 32.0p, with the main catalysts expected to be in the medium-to-long-term.
Numis, which thinks the p/e valuation and yield are attractive, sees the combined group are more diversified than either individual business was before, reducing shareholder risks to specific factors.
"We continue to believe that the main investment case for the new company is that it will be better positioned for the continuing industry challenges and outlook, by becoming a global scale asset manager (with pro-forma c.70-75% of group earnings
coming from asset management activities).
"Whilst we are positive on the medium to long term outlook for the group and regard the shares as relatively inexpensive, we see the next 6-12 months as a period of transition as the strategy develops and structures, leadership and teams are aligned," analysts wrote in a note on Monday.