| David Salisbury | ||||||
The departure of David Salisbury from Schroders gives more ammunition to those critics who say the firm lacks direction.
In the face of a big slump in first-half pre-tax profits from £130 million to £42 million, the spin on the move from Schroders is that Salisbury’s replacement with a new chief executive, now being headhunted, will bring fresh impetus to the firm.
One name being bandied around is former Deutsche Asset Management man Michael Dobson, still a non-executive director at Schroders, though having only recently set up his new business, Beaumont Capital, he will not come easily, or cheaply, if at all.
Salisbury follows highly regarded investment chief Nicola Ralston out of the door. She, unlike Salisbury, made her own decision, announcing she was leaving to spend more time with her family earlier this year.
It has not been an easy time for Schroders in the past few years.
The group was dismissed as a closet indexer by rival asset managers towards the end of the 1990s, its funds under management shrank as performance struggled and the marketplace heated up with the growing presence of US firms such as Capital and Fidelity.
Schroders continues to insist it will remain independent. This was the message Salisbury himself was putting out in early 2000 when Schroders offloaded its investment banking division to Salomon Smith Barney to concentrate on asset management.
Now that two of the architects of that new world order, in Salisbury and Ralston, are moving on, chairman Peter Sedgwick, who has stepped in as caretaker chief executive, is continuing to beat that particular drum. Schroders is, “absolutely, categorically not for sale,” he says.
