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(Adds branding agency, updates shares)
By Carolyn Cohn and Simon Jessop
LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) - British asset manager Standard
Life Aberdeen is changing its name to "Abrdn PLC",
abandoning the letter "e" in phone-text fashion as part of a
plan to modernise its brand.
The new name, unveiled on Monday, will still be pronounced
"Aberdeen" and comes after the company sold its Standard Life
brand to life insurer Phoenix earlier this year.
The Edinburgh-headquartered company said the name change
would also allow it to own digital assets such as apps and
websites, without confusion with the city of Aberdeen.
"Our new brand Abrdn builds on our heritage and is modern,
dynamic and, most importantly, engaging," 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."
The company, a sponsor of the Scottish Open golf tournament
and Edinburgh International Festival, declined to disclose the
amount spent on the rebrand, which was designed by agency Wolff
Olins.
The Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) name change is the latest
in a long line of corporate rebranding exercises, some of which
have gone better than others.
Royal Mail changed its name to Consignia in 2001,
for example, 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.
'SOME VOWELS, PLEASE'
Laith Khalaf, financial analyst at fund platform AJ Bell,
said the Abrdn name would "likely leave investors feeling dazed
and confused".
"Don't be surprised if stakeholders ask for some vowels,
please," he added.
SLA's shares jumped 2.5%, though, outperforming the FTSE 100
.
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 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.
There will be a "full stakeholder engagement plan" to manage
the change, it added.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Carolyn Cohn
Editing by Rachel Armstrong, Kirsten Donovan and Pravin Char)
