Investment giant Abrdn confirms plans to cut around 500 jobs in bid to save £150m

Investment giant Abrdn will cut hundreds of jobs as it seeks to cut millions of pounds from its annual costs and make its business more profitable.

The firm said that it wanted to save around £150m per year, and would cut back around 500 jobs as a result.

The “bulk of the savings will be in non-staff costs”, the Edinburgh-headquartered business said. But the job cuts will still reduce its workforce by approximately 10%.

Around £8 in every £10 that Abrdn will look to save will be in its investments arm, which in the six months to the end of December “continued to face structural headwinds”, the business said.

Money flowed out of the industry across the world, the firm added, as global politics made investors jittery.

The cost-cutting will include removing management layers, making outsourcing and technology more efficient, and much of the saving will come from support services.

It will cost the business around £150m to carry out the cost-cutting and most of it will happen this year.

“Market conditions have remained challenging for our mix of business,” said chief executive Stephen Bird.

“The board and I are committed to taking these significant cost actions now to restore our core Investments business to a more acceptable level of profitability.”

“We exceeded our £75m cost-reduction target for 2023 for Investments, but we recognise more needs to be done.

“After a root and branch review, we are now re-engineering and simplifying our business model to remove at least £150m of costs – mostly from group functions and support services.”

Abrdn said that its assets under management and administration fell from £495.7m in the middle of last year to £494.9m by the end of the year.

The statement from Abrdn confirms a Sky News report which was published on Tuesday. Shares fell 1.7% on Wednesday morning.

An abrdn spokesperson said: “Like many companies, we have been rationalising our property footprint as working practices have evolved over recent years.

“There is no associated impact on jobs for our Aberdeen based colleagues and we will continue to have a team based in the North East of Scotland.

“We are working closely with our colleagues to help them transition to the new working arrangements and they will continue to play an important role across multiple departments within the company.”