Schroders to name Richard Oldfield as next chief executive

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Schroders plans to appoint chief financial officer Richard Oldfield as its next chief executive, according to people familiar with the matter, tasking the former Big Four accountant with restoring the fortunes of one of the UK’s best-known asset managers.

Oldfield, who joined Schroders from professional services firm PwC last October, is lined up to take the top job when Peter Harrison retires next year, the people said.

The asset manager, whose eponymous founding family remains its largest shareholder, has been working with headhunters Russell Reynolds on finding a successor to Harrison, who has led Schroders since he took over from Michael Dobson in 2016.

Schroders, which has £774bn in assets under management, said in April that it was planning for an “orderly transition” in 2025 after the Financial Times reported it had launched a search for a successor.

Among the external candidates considered were Ralph Hamers, former chief executive of UBS and ING, and Annabel Spring, head of global private banking at HSBC, according to several people familiar with the matter. Both have been told that they are no longer in the race, the people added. Spokespeople for Hamers and Spring declined to comment.

Oldfield, who held a series of senior jobs in his two decades at PwC, was competing for the position against two other internal candidates: global chief investment officer Johanna Kyrklund and Meagen Burnett, group chief operating officer.  

The appointment is pending regulatory approval. Schroders declined to comment. Oldfield did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Harrison’s successor will face pressure to turn around the company’s performance and cut costs. Like its mid-sized rivals, Schroders has sought to offset the decline of its traditional mutual funds business by pushing into fast-growing areas such as private markets and wealth management.

Under Harrison, one of the longest-serving CEOs among FTSE 100 financial services groups, Schroders has also expanded into solutions services, a business that offers outsourced chief investment officers and liability-driven investing to pension funds.

While the three businesses now make up more than half of Schroders’ assets under management, their growth has not been enough to lift the group’s share price or deliver higher profits.

Harrison has also turned to acquisitions to drive growth, including the purchases in 2021 of River and Mercantile Group’s solutions business and a majority stake in renewable energy specialist Greencoat.

A top-20 shareholder in Schroders said that while the shift into faster-growing areas “looked like the right thing to do,” investors “need to see more growth from this more diversified business or costs have to come down, or a bit of both”.

The group’s share price is down more than 20 per cent this year and has almost halved from a peak in September 2021. The asset manager reported pre-tax profit of £487.6mn last year, down from £618.1mn in 2016, Harrison’s first year at the helm.

Schroders’ shares fell almost 10 per cent last month after its first-half profits disappointed and it revealed that margins had come under pressure. The stock is lingering at an 11-year low.

Analysts at Jefferies described Schroders’ pivot to higher-growth areas as “understandable but unsuccessful to date”, noting that its cost-to-income ratio was higher than many of its European peers.

The challenge for Harrison’s successor “will be the same as he has faced”, they wrote, adding: “Can Schroders do substantially better than be one of the slower melting ice cubes in the pack?”