British financial services group Standard Life has agreed to buy Aberdeen Asset Management for £8 billion (US$9.8 billion) to create one of the world’s biggest fund managers, the pair said yesterday.
The deal was presented as a merger, but Standard Life shareholders are to have overall control with a 66.7 percent stake in the new firm, according to a joint statement.
Aberdeen is to hold the rest.
The combined business is to have a stock market capitalization of £1 billion and oversee assets worth £60 billion — making it one of the largest investment managers in the world and the biggest in Britain.
The news sent Standard Life’s share price more than 7 percent higher in early morning London trading yesterday, while Aberdeen stock gained almost 6 percent.
“The boards of Standard Life PLC and Aberdeen Asset Management PLC are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended all-share merger,” the statement said.
The transaction “has a compelling strategic and financial rationale through combining Standard Life’s and Aberdeen’s complementary strengths to create a world class investment group,” it said, adding that the deal would “harness Standard Life’s and Aberdeen’s complementary, market leading investment and savings capabilities.”
The new business is to be headquartered in Scotland and have 9,000 staff worldwide.
“We have always been clear that it is Standard Life’s ambition to become a world-class investment company and that this would be achieved through continued investment in diversification and growth, coupled with a sharp focus on financial discipline,” Standard Life chief executive officer Keith Skeoch said. “We are therefore delighted that this announcement marks another important step towards achieving that ambition.”
“We strongly believe that we can build on the strength of the existing Standard Life business by combining with Aberdeen to create one of the largest active investment managers in the world and deliver significant value for all of our stakeholders,” he said.
The two groups, which had announced that they were in talks over the weekend, aim to complete the merger in the third quarter subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals.
“This merger brings financial strength, diversity of customer base and global reach to ensure that the enlarged business can compete effectively on the global stage,” Aberdeen chief executive officer Martin Gilbert said.
“The move by Standard Life to buy Aberdeen is a major attempt to try to build their defenses as the active management industry comes under increasing pressure from lower-cost passive managers,” Interactive Investor head of investment Rebecca O’Keeffe said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts