abrdn: The journey from Europe's second-largest fund manager to the FTSE 250

From the £11bn merger to Bird's exit

When abrdn’s former chief executive, Stephen Bird, said in January that the troubled UK asset manager needed to axe 500 jobs in order to drastically reduce costs, it was not expected that the CEO himself would become a casualty of those cuts.

Just months later, however, abrdn surprised both employers and investors of what was once the UK's biggest investment company by ousting Bird after a four-year tenure.  In all but name the 57-year-old was pushed out of the active fund manager, even though a statement read at the time that both the board and Bird had jointly agreed it was the "right time to hand over the reins" to someone new.  The existential threat at the heart of Britain's biggest wealth manager That someone - in the interim at least - is Jason Windsor, the firm's handsomely paid chief financial officer who, just...