By Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) - Standard Life Aberdeen said on Wednesday that Keith Skeoch had been appointed sole chief executive of Britain's biggest standalone listed asset manager.
The move by recently appointed chairman Douglas Flint ends a contentious period when the company was run jointly by Skeoch and Martin Gilbert, who led Aberdeen Asset Management at the time of its merger with Standard Life in 2017.
Gilbert will continue to serve as vice chairman of the group and chairman of Aberdeen Standard Investments, the company said in a statement, and focus on building relationships with key clients, winning new business and "realising the potential from our global network and product capabilities".
As part of a broader reshuffle of the board, SLA also said Finance Director Bill Rattray would step down at the end of May, to be replaced as Chief Financial Officer by Stephanie Bruce, a partner at consultant PwC.
"The changes that we have announced today have the unanimous backing of the Board," Flint said in the statement.
"The new structure will strengthen our client focus, simplify reporting lines and facilitate robust execution of the next stages of our transition and transformation programmes."
In a separate results statement, SLA said full-year profit from continuing operations was broadly flat at 650 million pounds in 2018, although net outflows from its funds had risen year-on-year to 40.9 billion pounds from 32.9 billion pounds.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop, editing by Sinead Cruise)
