Martin Gilbert

Born in Malaysia, Martin was educated at Robert Gordon’s College, Aberdeen, and the University of Aberdeen and has an LLB in Law and a MA in Accountancy.

Martin is Vice Chairman of Standard Life Aberdeen plc and Chairman of Aberdeen Standard Investments, the asset management business of the group.

Martin was the Chief Executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, which he co-founded in 1983. Under his leadership, Aberdeen became one of the world’s leading independent asset managers through a combination of organic growth and strategic acquisitions. In its first financial year AAM made a gross profit of £87 versus £353 million in 2016, the year prior to AAM’s merger with Standard Life.

In 2015, Harvard Business Review ranked Martin 22nd out of over 900 in its list of the world’s top performing CEOs.  Martin was named Personality of the Year at the City AM Awards in 2017 and Asset Management CEO of the Year at the Global Investor Awards the following year.

He is a non-executive director and senior independent director of Glencore plc. In addition, he is a member of the International Advisory Panel of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the International Advisory Board of BritishAmerican Business.

Martin is also non-executive Chairman of the online bank Revolut.

From 2011 to 2018 he served as a non-executive director and also deputy chairman of Sky plc.

In October 2019 Martin advised that he will not seek re-election at the Standard Life Aberdeen 2020 Annual General Meeting, and with the Board’s agreement will retire from the company on 30th September 2020.