Abrdn’s boss has picked up a 26 per cent pay increase to £2.1million – even as the fund manager slashes hundreds of jobs and suffers an investor exodus.
Chief executive Stephen Bird’s pay at the fund manager for 2023 included £1.1million in bonuses, 68 per cent up on the year before.
That was despite another year of losses for the beleaguered business – although at £6 m these were smaller than the £612million in 2022. Abrdn suffered net outflows of £13.9billion, up from £10.3billion.
Bird said that the wider industry had been hit by the ‘higher for longer’ interest rate environment.
Pay rise: Abrdn boss Stephen Bird earned £2.1m at the fund manager for 2023
Abrdn has suffered from years of clients pulling out cash and a plunging share price after it was formed from a merger between Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life in 2017.
Back then, the combined company was worth £11billion and had £670billion of assets under management.
Since then, its value has shrivelled to less than £3billion and it now manages assets of less than £500billion.
Bird, who took over in 2020, is attempting to turn around the company’s fortunes by cutting jobs – with a cull of 500 announced last month – as well as reducing its range of funds.
The company has also been expanding into mass market retail investing, buying online platform Interactive Investor in 2022.
Yesterday, Bird insisted that his plan was working, saying the company was ‘better positioned for future growth’.
Shares gyrated wildly on the results, rising nearly 8 per cent in early trading before heading down and ending the session off by 3.3 per cent, or 5.3 p, to 156.2 p.
