Schroders calls in new finance chief as assets tick upwards
Schroders has announced its finance chief Richard Keers will step down from the firm later in the year as it reported a bump in assets under management in the first quarter.
The FTSE 100 asset manager said PwC executive Richard Oldfield would take over from Keers in October this year.
The update came as Schroders revealed its assets under management ticked up to £746.3bn by the end of March, up from £737.5bn at the end of the previous quarter, after a tricky year for the firm in which it was hammered by the fall-out of Liz Truss’s mini-budget and volatile markets.
Peter Harrison, Group Chief Executive said today that Keers had been an “exceptional CFO and partner” and helped deliver a “period of robust growth and strong momentum across the business”.
“I am delighted that Richard Oldfield is joining the firm and believe that his global perspective and his experience in advising large multinational financial services organisations will help us to continue to deliver our strategy,” he added.
Oldfield is currently vice chairman and global markets leader at PwC where he leads the firm’s market-facing activities, initiatives, and strategy.
At Schroders, he will have responsibility for firm-wide operations along with “direct responsibility for financial management, risk management, technology, capital and treasury”, Schroders said.
Schroders, which last year lost £20.2bn in a quarter from the unit that houses liability-driven investment strategies, which were hammered by Truss’s budget, saw its assets under management rise 4.3 per cent to £219.3bn in that unit at March-end.
The update unsettled investors today however, with shares in the firm dipping 1.5 per cent in early trading.