Standard Life Aberdeen

The company was founded in 1825 in Edinburgh under the name Standard Life Assurance Company and was engaged in life insurance . With the takeover of the insurance company York & London in 1844, Standard Life acquired its London branch. In 1846, the Colonial Life Assurance Company, a subsidiary of the British colonies, was founded and representative offices were opened in Canada (Montreal) and India. Since 1847, the company began work in the West Indies (the regional office is located in Barbados), from 1854 in South Africa, from 1889 in Uruguay and Argentina, from 1898 in Egypt. Since 1890, Standard Life also began to develop the European market, then branches were opened in Belgium, Denmark and Sweden, in 1898 in Hungary (until 1921), in 1904 in Spain (Barcelona). Since the 1890s, investment activity began to play an increasingly important role in the work of Standard Life. Since 1910, the company began to engage in pension insurance . In 1925, Standard Life was re-registered as a mutual insurance company (that is, became the property of policyholders ) and by 1960 it became the largest mutual insurance company in the UK. In the 1930s, Standard Life significantly reduced its presence abroad, especially in Europe. In 1966, the company took part in the creation of Insurope, a European consortium of insurance companies that provided pension insurance to those who worked in different countries (subsequently the consortium became international) ^[4] .

In 2006, a mutual company became public when its shares were listed on the London Stock Exchange . In 2015, Manulife , the largest Canadian insurance company, sold its subsidiary Standard Life (Canada) for £ 2.2 billion ^{[1] [5]} .

In July 2016, a real estate investment fund managed by Standard Life Investments froze the withdrawal of funds by customers after liquidity problems occurred ^{[6] [7]} .

In March 2017, Standard Life reached a merger agreement with Aberdeen Asset Management (all shares were subject to merger, subject to approval by shareholders) ^[8] . It was announced that the merged company would be called Standard Life Aberdeen, the renaming took place on August 14, 2017 ^{[9] [10]} . In October 2017, it was reported that $ 10 billion was withdrawn from Standard Life Aberdeen's mutual funds for the previous year ^[11] .

• Jerry Grimstone (born in August 1949) has been Chairman of the Board since May 2007. He is also the vice chairman of Barclays , a member of the Deloitte board of directors and a non-executive director at the UK Department of Defense . He graduated from Oxford University ^[12] .
• Keith Skeoch ( Keith Skeoch , born in November 1956) - chief executive officer since August 5, 2015, in the company since 1999 ^[12] .

Standard Life operates in the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, serving 4.5 million customers in 46 countries and another 25 million customers through joint ventures in India (HDFC Life) and China (Heng An Standard Life). The company's turnover in 2015 amounted to £ 8.892 billion (in 2014 - £ 16.588 billion).

Headquartered in Edinburgh (UK), regional centers in Boston (USA) and Hong Kong . The main region of activity is the UK, which gives three quarters of the company's turnover.

In the Forbes Global 2000 list of the largest public companies in the world for 2016, Standard Life took 366th place, including 648th in terms of turnover, 287th in terms of net profit, 111th in terms of assets and 1137th in terms of market capitalization ^{[ 13]}

Main units

• Standard Life Investments - the main company of the group, it accounts for 80% of assets under management; offers investment products to individual and institutional clients, as well as to subsidiaries of the group itself.
• UK & Europe - savings and investment products in the UK, Germany, Austria and Ireland.
• India & China are joint ventures in India and China, as well as subsidiaries in Hong Kong ^[14] .

Standard Life issued 2.4 billion shares worth 10 pence each. The company has about 105 thousand shareholders, but 456 of them own 92% of the shares.