Tomorrow's Business Today
Futurist Abrdn gets the bird over “corporate bullying”
One of our occasional excursions into bizarro business world today, a trip that if nothing else reminds us why company executives need PR people to guide them back to planet earth, or at least to somewhere near our own solar system.
Abrdn – the old Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life business – was widely, and predictably mocked for its new name.
It has been disemvowled, someone said, though there’s a dispute about who came up with this gag first. (Ok, it was me, I can prove it.)
That was three years ago. Now chief investment officer Peter Branner is complaining to Financial News that the company is facing “corporate bullying”.
In full: “I understand that corporate bullying to some extent is part of the game with the press, even though it’s a little childish to keep hammering the missing vowels in our name. Would you do that with an individual? How would you look at a person who makes fun of your name day in, day out? It’s probably not ethical to do it. But apparently with companies it is different.”
A few things. Yes, it is different. Corporate bullying definitely exists, but it is done by them, not to them.
And there’s a massive gap between laughing at someone with a funny name and laughing at a gigantic company that picked a funny name for itself. Abrdn – the letters – does not have feelings.
The sub at The Times who came up with “Abrdn cries vowel over brand name mockery”, does, and we trust her day was suitably cheered by Mr Branner.
Thirdly, the ridiculous name-change would by now have been forgotten if the company weren’t such a mess, if the name didn’t seem indicative of wider problems.
The FT’s Lex column in January called the company “an investor’s horror story”, adding: “If UK fund management has a Frankenstein’s monster then Abrdn best fits the bill.”
Meanwhile, shareholders are being urged to vote against the pay of CFO Jason Windsor since it is “more than the norm for such a position”.
Where is CEO Stephen Bird in all this?
Well, off somewhere calling himself “a futurist” presumably because the presentist is so tricky.
As the FT’s spoof PR man Rutherford Hall notes, “God save us from bosses who want to be visionaries.”
Those who are stable, who can take a joke as well as make one, are always miles better.
Press release of the day
Homebuyers paid £3.65 billion in stamp duty last year, reveals this from Benham and Reeves.
The London market accounted for £1.4 billion of that – more than 40% of the total. Kensington and Chelsea paid 5.6% of the full tax amount.
Marc von Grundherr said: “Stamp duty is an outdated tax grab that acts as nothing more than a thorn in the side of the nation’s homebuyers and one that has remained there due to the greed of a stubborn government intent on taxing our ascent up the property ladder.”
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