(Bloomberg) — Schroders Plc is shrinking the size of its executive committee to nine members from 22, as new Chief Executive Officer Richard Oldfield seeks to make the firm nimbler and revive the fortunes of the UK’s largest standalone asset manager.
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The revamp — the first as CEO by Oldfield who’s taking over the top job Monday from Peter Harrison — comes as he faces pressure to resuscitate a stock that’s slumped more than 50% in the past three years. In an interview, the executive, who joined the 220-year-old firm in 2023 as chief financial officer after more than two decades at PwC, didn’t rule out wider job cuts to help trim costs.
“We’re going through the process now of understanding what we want the shape of the business to look like,” the 53-year-old executive said, adding he will provide an update in March. “Our challenge is how we create simplicity” around the three main businesses “and then talk about what the gap between that is and what we have today and how we then manage that,” he said.
The leadership transition comes at a pivotal time for the money manager, which has faced criticism for its relatively high cost base and slower organic growth in its private markets business. Schroders manages about £777 billion ($1 trillion) in assets.
In a sign of investors’ growing impatience, the company’s shares plunged almost 14% on Nov. 5, following a trading update that showed £2.3 billion of quarterly outflows and warned of £10 billion more in redemptions.
The move to downsize the executive committee brings Schroders more in line with its European rivals Amundi SA and DWS Group, which have an executive team count of 13 and 6 members, respectively.
Members who are no longer part of the committee will still stay on with the firm. The overhaul will also see some new faces on the panel. Ed Houghton, who was most recently a director at Legal & General Group Plc, will join Schroders and its management committee as head of strategy and investor engagement, according to a statement seen by Bloomberg News.
Mary-Anne Daly will continue on the committee, overseeing wealth management; private-assets head Georg Wunderlin will become head of Schroders Capital; and, Karine Szenberg will take over as the sole head of the Client Group.
Oldfield said a review is underway of Schroders’ various businesses that encompass actively-managed public markets funds, a solutions unit that provides investment services to corporate pension plans, as well as wealth management and private markets divisions.
