The group moved to slow inflows into its £3bn Emerging Markets fund, the £7.2bn Global Emerging Markets Equity fund run by Devan Kaloo and the $3.4bn Aberdeen Global Emerging Markets Smaller Companies fund in February.
And now the group has said the move alongside weaker investment sentiment towards emerging markets has seen reduced assets in the global emerging markets equity range.
“There was a small net outflow from equities, including £0.6bn of net outflows from global emerging market equities which reflects the combination of weaker investor sentiment in the short term and the action we have taken to manage capacity,” the group said.
“This outflow was more than offset by flows into our Asia Pacific and Japan equity products.
“There was also a net outflow of £0.5bn from global equities, largely due to the withdrawal of assets by a single investor.”
The group reported a fall in assets under management from £209.6bn at the end of June to £201.7bn at the end of August, with the group seeing a net outflow of £1.2bn for the two months.
The firm said in a statement to markets that it had recorded gross new business of £7bn in the two-month period, and net outflows of £1.2bn spread across asset classes. It added that underlying pre-tax profit for the year to September 30 is expected to be at the upper end of market forecasts.
Separately, Aberdeen announced today that it has launched a global government bond fund, which it said was targeted at investors looking to diversify their exposure in the fixed income space.
The Aberdeen Global – World Government Bond fund “will offer a highly diversified portfolio of global sovereign fixed income securities,” and can invest in sub-investment grade debt.
It will be managed by Aberdeen’s global macro team led by Jozsef Szabo and measured against a GDP-weighted benchmark, which the company said would result in a focus towards countries with higher yields but low public debt.
The minimum investment into the fund is $1,000, and the proposition has been given $75m of initial seed money from an institutional investor.
Commenting on the firm’s interim results, chief executive Martin Gilbert said: “Aberdeen’s performance during the past year, and particularly over the last three months, has demonstrated our core resilience. Our assets under management, balance sheet and profitability remain robust despite continuing market volatility.
“Encouragingly, we continue to see considerable investor appetite for our non-equity products, for example the £130m of commitments recently received for a new property fund.”
The company received €151.5m of initial commitments for its new Aberdeen European Secondaries Real Estate fund, with Första AP-fonden (AP1) as lead investor.
The Property Multi-Manager team will construct a portfolio of roughly 15 funds which will have exposure to over 200 properties in Europe. Lars Graneld and Johan Temse will be the lead managers.
The company has also launched the institutional Aberdeen Global – Frontier Markets Bond Fund, managed by the emerging markets debt team, led by Brett Diment.
