“It’s been a year of extraordinary highs and lows,” Rodney Cook, chief executive of Just Retirement said today.
The pensions provider actually managed to raise its profits despite Chancellor George Osborne’s sweeping changes in the Budget which wiped out just over half the firm’s annuity sales.
That came in March, six months after Just Retirement’s £1.1 billion stock-market float at 225p a share. The shares fell more than 40% on Budget day and even with today’s 3.5p rise to 142p are still 37% below the float price.”
“It was a game of two halves,” said Cook, “with the Chancellor waving about unnecessary yellow cards after the break.”
The Budget changes cost 100 of Just’s 850-strong workforce their jobs as it immediately sought to cut costs by £14 million a year.
However, Cook can also see some silver linings in Osborne’s pensions revolution.
“Truly independent guaranteed advice to retirees, a continuing flow of funds as people get older and an extension of our products from just unhealthy to healthy people are all opportunities,” he said.
Just’s operating profit rose 2% to £80 million and its embedded value — an insurer’s measure of value — rose by 18% to 191p a share.
