Martin Gilbert, the chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, calls it “style drift”, the frantic shifting of assets under management into this or that class to keep pace with moving markets. Aberdeen prefers to stay where it is, even if this has resulted in an outflow of funds for the past eight quarters in a row.
Of Aberdeen’s £330.6 billion of funds under management, including those acquired with Scottish Widows Investment Partnership a year ago, well over £100 billion is in emerging markets — not the place to be at present. Investors are running scared of the effect on dollar-denominated debt of a rise in US interest rates, even if the timing of this still seems uncertain.
Aberdeen and SWIP suffered £11.3 billion net