Business & Media: Business: Life will become what he makes it: Standard Life boss Sandy Crombie is having to focus on the short term ahead of the high-risk pounds 5bn flotation, says Oliver Morgan

• Published in: The Observer (London)
• Main Author: Morgan, Oliver
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 04.06.2006
• ISSN: 0029-7712

Standing in the London Stock Exchange, Sandy Crombie points to a screen and says: 'The markets are up. They are pointing the right way.' In today's markets, that's quite a short-term view. It's particularly so for Crombie, who, as chief executive of Standard Life, runs a very long-term business, providing pensions, life assurance, banking and health cover to 7 million people. Despite being a 'Standard Lifer', with nearly 40 years at the company, Crombie refuses to look backwards. But, as his remarks on the exchange floor indicate, he can't look too far forward just now either. The float will be launched this month with three offerings - preferentially for members (up to pounds 50,000 of shares each) then retail, and finally institutional. Between now and then, Crombie will be on the road selling the offerings for all he is worth - and looking carefully at the state of a volatile market. Crombie has also changed the balance of products the company offers, moving from high-volume loss-makers such as regular premium individual pensions, which gave independent financial advisers high commissions but gave Standard low charges, into more lucrative ones such as self-invested personal pensions (Sipps). He has been able to trumpet a financial turnaround of late, with pounds 20m profits on new business in the first quarter of this year, compared with pounds 33m for the whole of last year. The year before, Standard Life made a loss of pounds 132m.