abrdn, one of Britain’s biggest fund managers is preparing to sell its private equity business according to a report by Sky News. The move is part of an ongoing streamlining of the firm’s operations under chief executive Stephen Bird.
The report says that abrdn, which managed close to £550 billion in assets at the end of 2021, has hired bankers at Rothschild to sell the unit which manages roughly £14 billion in private equity assets.
Bird, who joined abrdn two years ago when the company was still known as Standard Life Aberdeen, has been simplifying the sprawling company by exiting a number of non-core businesses and focusing on areas where it already has the advantage of scale. The company recently agreed a £1.5 billion acquisition of Interactive Investor making ion one of the UK’s largest direct-to-consumer investment providers.
