It also leaves another hole in a business that is likely to be down on morale, especially coming, as it does, hard on the heels of the loss of its global head of distribution.
Here too, there are seemingly understandable reasons for the departure, given that John Brett joined the firm from Scottish Widows, he, like Mark Harries, the firm’s recently departed head of multi-manager, who also joined from SWIP have decided to leave following the completion of the integration of the two businesses.
According to Numis Securities’ David McCann, the departures are likely coincidental. While he admits that the recent number of high profile departures is probably higher than average, in a business the size of Aberdeen, such departures will happen.
But, he agrees that morale is probably lower than it was 18 months ago. And maintains are fairly cautious outlook on the firm’s prospects.
“I don’t think the negativity toward emerging markets will last forever, it has been out of favour for at least 18 months now,” he told Portfolio Adviser, but he added: “It is too late now to diversify more than it has already, so it is just going to have to ride out this sentiment.”
Barclays has taken a more negative view on things. Downgrading its outlook for the firm earlier this month after deciding that there is more than just negative emerging market sentiment at play.
It pointed out: “The Aberdeen share strongly underperformed in 2015, down 33% vs the avg UK Asset Manager in our coverage universe +16%.
“It is tempting to view the share as solely a macro call on EM sentiment. However, we highlight that significant other areas remain vulnerable to outflow risk. This would include the underperforming Global Equities desk, HY in Fixed Income, the SWIP life book and the Multi-Asset area of Aberdeen Solutions.”
As a result of this, as well as a significantly lower asset base, as well as only modest cost rationalisation plans, the firm dropped its target price from 350p to 250p.
All in all, the recent departures seem more a confluence of ambition, integration and general industry churn rather than a co-ordinated mass departure, but that does not mean that the firm is out of the woods and, losing good people at the bottom does make it that much harder to drag oneself out of the malaise when things do turn and markets pick up once more.
