SHARES in Edinburgh financial services giant Standard Life Aberdeen fell by six per cent yesterday after Japanese banking group Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation offloaded its entire holding in the business for a discounted price.
Though shares in the business had been trading at 249.5p on Thursday, the £349.3 million raised by the Japanese group meant that investors had been able to acquire Standard Life Aberdeen’s shares for an average price of 235p.
Shares in the group, which was formed via the August 2017 merger of Standard Life with Aberdeen Asset Management, opened 5.5% down as a result and continued to fall over the course of the day yesterday.
They are now trading 45% lower than they were on the day the merger completed, with the group last year embarking on a share buyback programme in a bid to shore up their value.
In a statement Tokyo-headquartered Mitsubishi UFJ said it was offloading its 6% position in Standard Life Aberdeen as part of a wider corporate plan unveiled by parent Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group in 2017. That has seen it “conduct a review of existing strategic investments”.
The sale also came after Mitsubishi UFJ last year signalled its intent to become a player in the asset management space in its own right.
In October the business confirmed that it is going to acquire Colonial First State Global Asset Management from Commonwealth Bank of Australia in a deal that is expected to close by the middle of this year.
Standard Life Aberdeen continues to manage a multi-billion pound portfolio of mainly pension money on behalf of Mitsubishi UFJ.
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