Don’t look weird, and make the name easy to write. In planning to call itself Abrdn, Standard Life Aberdeen has broken two golden rules of corporate rebranding. The new name is an awkward blur that is guaranteed to enrage customers’ spellchecking functions.
Stphn Brd, as the asset manager’s chief executive presumably now styles himself, called it “modern, agile and digitally enabled”, but he sounded like a man trying to justify a large bill from the designers. Modern financial firms call themselves things such as Monzo or Revolut, which have a zing about them. In this case, the company had to include a guide to pronunciation. The answer turns out to be Aberdeen, so why bother rinsing out three-quarters of the vowels?
As for the claim to agility, the truth is the opposite. A name that will cause an unfamiliar speaker to pause is clunky. Even Monday, as PwC once wanted to call itself until it succumbed to gales of laughter, was a word. The boast about “digitally enabled” also looks premature as digital technology moves on to voice recognition. What the company means is that domain names for “Aberdeen” in full are taken, which doesn’t qualify as an excuse.
Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Management have suffered an identity problem since the misfiring merger of the two Scottish fund managers in 2017, so a desire for something new is understandable. The Standard Life brand went to Phoenix, which bought the life insurance funds, so unification had to be around the Aberdeen name. But the funky text message-style format just jars. Abndn Abrdn and start again.
SFO humiliated again in court
The most embarrassing trial collapse for the Serious Fraud Office of recent times? Quite possibly. The case against two former Serco executives, Nicholas Woods and Simon Marshall, resulted from an eight-year investigation, but the trial failed after only three weeks, about a third of the way through its expected timespan. The judge said the SFO had not disclosed relevant documents to the defence.
The SFO’s humiliation is compounded by echoes of the Tesco accounting saga in 2018. In that instance, the judge said the case against two individuals was “so weak that it should not be left for a jury’s consideration”. A third defendant was formally found not guilty soon afterwards when the SFO offered no evidence.
A common factor in the Serco and Tesco cases was the SFO’s use of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), a plea bargain available to companies but not individuals. The system was an import from the US adopted in 2014, and was supposed to revolutionise the crime agency’s effectiveness.
In one sense, it has. Nine DPAs have been agreed, some involving very large penalties, such as Rolls-Royce’s £671m settlement of corruption allegations. But not a single prosecution against an individual has succeeded and some cases, including Rolls, have not generated charges against executives.
To put it mildly, the position is problematic. The impression is that the SFO finds it relatively easy to score a “win” against a company without having to put its case in front of a jury, and it may be helped by the fact that boards of directors are writing cheques with shareholders’ money.
But the risk is that individuals are treated as collateral damage by their employees and the SFO, which is the understandable complaint from the acquitted Serco defendants. The SFO will examine its disclosure processes. What is also needed is an external review of the agency’s use of DPAs.
JP Morgan left to reflect on ESL stupidity
It is “not true” that JP Morgan has abandoned the European Super League project, the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Perez, claimed at the weekend. “They have taken some time for reflection,” he said. Legally speaking, he may be correct. JP Morgan, despite its contrite admission last Friday that it had “misjudged” the reaction in football world, won’t comment
Perez must know though that Wall Street banks still know how to write a watertight lending contract. Unless there’s a media rights deal and blessing for the ESL from Uefa or Fifa, football’s governing bodies, there won’t be a €3.25bn loan. Since none of things look remotely likely, the only thing left for JP Morgan’s bankers to reflect upon is their own stupidity.