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(Adds background on name changes)
By Carolyn Cohn and Simon Jessop
LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - British asset manager Standard
Life Aberdeen said on Monday it plans to change its name
to "Abrdn PLC" as part of a plan to shore up and modernise its
brand identity.
The new name - which will be pronounced "Aberdeen" - comes
after the company sold its Standard Life brand to life insurer
Phoenix earlier this year.
"Our new brand Abrdn builds on our heritage and is modern,
dynamic and, most importantly, engaging for all of our client
and customer channels," said chief executive Stephen Bird, who
joined the firm last year.
"It is a highly-differentiated brand that will create unity
across the business, replacing five different brand names that
have each been operating independently."
Edinburgh-headquartered Standard Life merged with
Aberdeen-based Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017 and Phoenix
bought SLA's European and UK insurance businesses the following
year.
Phoenix took on the Standard Life brand from SLA in Feb 2021
and sold back some of the businesses it bought in 2018, as the
pair simplified their partnership.
The SLA name change is the latest in a long-line of
corporate rebranding exercises, some which have gone better than
others. Royal Mail changed its name to Consigna in 2001,
only to drop the rebrand the following year.
PwC briefly changed the name of its consulting arm to
"Monday" in 2002, weeks before IBM then bought the business and
dropped the name.
The Abrdn rebranding process will begin in the summer with
the aim of creating a "digitally-enabled brand that will also be
used for all the company's client-facing businesses globally",
SLA said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for the firm said the name change will enable
the company to own digital assets such as apps and websites,
without confusion with the city of Aberdeen.
SLA's shares rose 1%, outperforming the FTSE 100.
But the move faced a critical reception on Twitter, with one
Twitter user asking "Is it the most preposterous rebrand ever?"
(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Carolyn Cohn
Editing by Rachel Armstrong, Kirsten Donovan)
