However, Standard Life Aberdeen reduces its stake in HDFC Life Insurance to 8.9

On Thursday, Standard Life Aberdeen plc (LON: SLA) announced that it has sold part of its stake in HDFC Life Insurance Company. The asset manager realised proceeds of £172 million when it sold 2.8% of its stake in its subsidiary.

Standard Life Aberdeen opened on Thursday with less than 1% loss but gained more than 1.5% in the next few hours. The asset manager’s shares are now trading at £2.86 per share. By comparison, it started the year at £3.36 per share and had fallen to £1.74 per share in March. If you want to invest in the stock market, you need a broker – here is a comparison of the few best to help you choose.

Standard Life sells 27.8 million shares of HDFC on Thursday

The news comes just days after Standard Life announced plans to outsource the Parmenion consulting arm. In early June this year, Standard Life had raised £200 million by selling 40 million shares of HDFC Life Insurance.

Standard Life sold a total of 27.8 million shares of HDFC on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India at £6.24 each. The money raised by the Edinburgh-based company will be used for general corporate purposes, the company said.

Over the past two years, Standard Life Aberdeen has reduced its stake in HDFC Life Insurance by approximately 19%. In December 2018, the company had a 29.2% stake in its insurance subsidiary. Including Thursday’s announcement, the asset manager now holds an 8.9% stake in the Mumbai-based company. At the current share price of £6.52 per share of HDFC, Standard Life’s 8.9% stake in the insurance provider is valued at £1.17 billion.

Standard Life can no longer appoint a director to the board of HDFC.

As Standard Life now holds less than 10% of HDFC Life Insurance, it can no longer appoint a director to the board of the Indian insurance company. The remaining stake in HDFC Life Insurance will remain unchanged until the end of March 2021.

The UK asset manager announced in the first week of August that it closed the first half of the year with a pre-tax loss of £498 million due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far infected more than 1.6 million people in the UK and caused over 59 thousand deaths.

Standard Life Aberdeen performed quite well on the stock market last year with an annual profit of almost 30%. At the time of writing this report the company is valued at £6.30 billion.