Aberdeen suffers £5.2bn in outflows as volatility hits markets
Aberdeen suffered £5.2billion in net outflows in the first quarter, as the FTSE 100 fund manager was hit by weak markets and a big redemption in its investments division.
The asset manager, which resestablished its vowels in another rebrand last month, is currently undergoing a strategy revamp led by boss Jason Windsor after years of tough trading conditions.
It told investors it remained committed to its financial year 2026 targets, despite mixed flows in the first quarter of this year.
The large outflow at the start of the year is understood to primarily reflected a previously guided £4.2billion redemption by its biggest client Phoenix.
Abrdn continues to aim for an adjusted operating profit above £300million and net capital generation of around £300million.
The fund manager said its assets under management reduced to £500.1billion at the end of March, from the £511.4billion at the end of 2024.
The group's assets under management and administration slipped to £500.1billion, reflecting market weakness and a large previously flagged redemption, but strong growth at Interactive Investor helped offset some of the drag.
Aberdeen saw £1.6billion in net inflows and a 9 per cent year-on-year increase in customers to 450,000, including a 29 per cent surge in higher-value SIPP accounts.
Adviser outflows of £600million were the lowest in over a year as service levels improved.
The group's investments arm saw £6.4billion in outflows, largely due to a £4.2billion low-margin mandate redemption.
Aberdeen said it picked up a £6billion pound quantitative strategies mandate this month after the quarter ended.
Boss Jason Windsor said market volatility since Donald Trump's announcement of trade tariffs on 2 April had led to record trading volumes at interactive investor, but had not otherwise had a big impact on the business so far.
'We're a long-term player with a long-term focus, and despite the new uncertainty created in recent weeks, we've made good progress towards our objectives,' Windsor said.
Windsor has reportedly begun cutting costs at Aberdeen and shedding under-performing businesses, but downplayed the possibility of a wider restructure involving the hiving off of its asset management division to focus on wealth.
'There is no effort or energy going in in that regard at all. We're very happy with the configuration of the group,' Windsor said on Wednesday.
In March, the asset manager announced a rebrand to Aberdeen, having been previously called Abrdn.
The group said the rebrand was a 'pragmatic' decision required to 'remove distractions.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Farage does not care about Scotland, says Swinney
Nigel Farage 'doesn't care about Scotland', John Swinney has said, as the Reform UK leader is set to head north of the border. Mr Farage is expected to address a press conference in Aberdeen on Monday as the race in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election enters its final days. While the SNP and Labour were seen as frontrunners in the seat in a contest sparked by Scottish Government minister Christina McKelvie, Reform UK has entered the mix ahead of the vote. But the party has come in for criticism for how it has campaigned in the seat, with attack ads on Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar being branded racist. Both of the frontrunners have also turned their attacks on Reform, with Mr Sarwar describing Mr Farage as a 'poisonous little man' and the First Minister accusing him of bringing 'racism and hatred' to the South Lanarkshire race. As campaigning enters its final days, Mr Swinney warned of the potential threat from Reform, saying: 'Things remain tough for too many families who feel let down by Labour – who have given up in this campaign – and the deeply concerning rise in support for Farage. 'Be in no doubt, Nigel Farage doesn't care about Scotland. He poses a threat to our values and must be stopped, and only the SNP can do that. 'In this by-election, the SNP is the only party investing in Scotland's future, delivering for families and confronting Farage. On Thursday, vote SNP to stop Farage.' Mr Swinney touted his own Government's record, including free prescriptions, free tuition and free bus travel for the young and the elderly, as well as plans to scrap peak rail fares and mitigate the two-child benefit cap. 'On the final week of campaigning in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, it's clear which party is on Scotland's side,' he said. Mr Swinney's comments come as his party's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said Mr Farage was 'just as dangerous to Scotland's long-term energy and economic future as the activists who would shut down the oil and gas industry tomorrow'. Mr Farage has long been an opponent of net zero, while his deputy Richard Tice told the PA news agency one of his party's key policies ahead of the Holyrood elections next year would be to push for increased oil extraction. Responding, a spokesman for Reform UK said: 'The SNP's hostile environment to oil and gas has been holding Scotland back for decades. 'From standing idly by whilst the Grangemouth refinery closed, to opposing oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, the SNP have not only failed to realise the countless jobs that could be created in the sector, but also sacrificed hundreds of jobs on the altar of their net zero obsession.'
Times
13 hours ago
- Times
Why Scots are ready to hold their nose and vote for Reform
If Reform fails to win the Hamilton, Larkhall & Stonehouse by-election on Thursday, it will not be for want of trying by the establishment parties. They have been giving Nigel Farage's fringe party, which has only five MPs and even fewer policies, unprecedented publicity. The Reform candidate, councillor Ross Lambie, a defector from the Scottish Tories, is sounding chipper. 'We can't lose this week even if we don't win,' he says tautologically. The prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, last week delivered what sounded like a campaign speech against Farage, as if this were a general election and Reform a prospective party of government. John Swinney has taken to declaring Hamilton as a 'two-horse race' between the SNP and Reform, crediting the Faragists as a potential opposition in Scotland. No wonder the former leader of the actual Scottish Tory opposition, Douglas Ross, got himself thrown out of FMQs in despair. So, when Farage arrives in Aberdeen on Monday he will be embarking on a kind of victory tour. A politician who is supposedly anathema to Scots will be basking in the attention he is getting from the political classes. 'Look,' he's saying. 'I'm the new force in Scottish politics and you lot can't help confirming it.' John Swinney's comic-opera 'summit against the far right' last month turned out to be the curtain-raiser for Farage's in-your-face tour. Aberdeen is an appropriate starting point too. It is the epicentre of Scottish deindustrialisation. All the parties, Tories included, are implicated in the mismanagement of the North Sea oil and gas industry. By banning exploration, when we still rely on fossil fuels for 75 per cent of overall energy use, and by imposing punitive taxation on oil and gas companies, governments in Holyrood and Westminster have connived in the destruction of one of Scotland's few remaining sources of high-paying jobs. At least that is how Farage will put it. He will say we are mugs for importing oil and gas from America and Norway at high cost when we have our own resources in the North Sea. He will ridicule SNP plans to scrap a million gas boilers in Scotland for expensive heat pumps. And here is the thing: many Scottish voters agree. The bien-pensant Scottish intelligentsia, if it still merits the term, is in despair at the very thought of working-class voters turning to a party they believe is composed of soft-shoe fascists. But the more Farage is accused of being a 'climate change denier' or a 'racist' by the Scottish Green Party, the more he likes it. Farage revels in being an environmental iconoclast and loves poking the left by condemning mass immigration. The left's instinct is to take to the streets this week as they did in 2013 when Farage, then the leader of Ukip, had to be rescued by police from an Edinburgh pub. But if they retain an ounce of sense, the organisers of Sunday's 'Stand Up To Racism' conference will cancel their plans to 'drive Farage out of Scotland'. Times change. Voters change. The left is bereft of an answer to the Reform phenomenon, and the public are sick of superannuated student protesters noisily parading their dodgy virtue on the streets. The Faragists deliberately provoked progressive Scotland by launching a social media race war against the Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, claiming he intends to 'prioritise the Pakistani community'. After Sarwar accused them of racism, Reform doubled down. They started posting videos on social media of the Labour leader lamenting the fact that so many Scots in high places are 'white … white … white'. The former first minister, Humza Yousaf, delivered a similar litany of racial complaint at the height of Black Lives Matter in 2020. Why was Reform playing the race card? For publicity, obviously, but also because it appears to be doing them no harm in Lanarkshire. This does not mean Scots are turning racist, however. Many just feel that the Holyrood political class care more about minority groups and benefit claimants than they do about struggling working and middle-class families who have seen their livelihoods wither, their children turn to drugs, and old people freeze because of high fuel prices and the loss of the winter fuel payment. It is no good condemning Farage's 'opportunism' in promising to restore the payment in full and scrap the two-child benefit cap while cutting taxes. Nor that Reform's sums do not add up. Right now, none of the UK parties' sums add up. Voters care little for finger-wagging politicians and columnists effectively chastising them for even contemplating voting for Reform. It leaves them cold. They see how Starmer has himself taken to speaking the same language as Farage, talking about the UK becoming an 'island of strangers' because of 'the failed experiment in open borders'. They are not going to take any lectures on nativism from John Swinney. After all, the SNP was the original ethnic nationalist party. Immigration has rarely been an issue in Scotland, largely because there has been so little of it. But there is a widespread feeling that the attentions and affections of the political classes are elsewhere. Reform is a repository of the collective resentment at the political class, who seem more interested in promoting transgender ideology, immigration and net zero than maintaining Scottish jobs, fixing the NHS and maintaining living standards. However, I do not think that, come polling day, many Hamilton voters will actually vote for Reform. Most will express their discontent by not voting. Of course, anything could happen in a three-horse race on a low turnout. The by-election is conducted under first-past-the-post, which makes prediction a mug's game. The latest Norstat opinion poll in The Sunday Times suggests that support for Reform may have peaked and that, intriguingly, support for independence edges up to 58 per cent if Nigel Farage were to become prime minister. This may explain why Swinney is talking up their prospects. The paradox of the Hamilton by-election is that Nigel Farage remains an unpopular figure in Scotland, even as his party is apparently registering unprecedented support. But that is not so strange, really. No one thinks Nigel Farage is going to be prime minister. Voters want to express their disgust at the way politics has been conducted in Scotland. It is a plague on all your houses — and if Farage is the plague-carrier, so be it.
The Sun
18 hours ago
- The Sun
Ultra-rare pattern on 50p coin means it's sold for an enormous £2,500 – do you own one?
A COMMEMORATIVE 50p coin has sold for a whopping £2,500 because of an ultra-rare pattern. Coin hunters should check their collections to see if they have snatched up one of the treasures. After a bidding war, the coin was snagged for £2,552 and had five bids in total. The coin was released for the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee in 2022. It was first 50p ever made to mark a royal event. The heads side of the coin features The Queen on horseback, while the tails face shows the number 70, marking how long Her Majesty had been ruling for. The coin's design was personally been given the nod by the Queen. Around 1.3million of the celebratory coins were made available on "limited release". News of the 50p coin was first revealed by the Royal Mint, exciting collectors. Postmaster Umesh Sanghani, who has run Dedworth Green Post Office in Windsor for 23 years with wife Rashmita, said at the time: "We have had many customers coming into our Post Office to check that we are going to get the special 50p coin. "They don't want to miss out on this souvenir." Other versions of the seven-sided 50p coin are among the most collectable and it's the first time a royal event has appeared on the tail side of the coin. Rare 50p coins can often sell for hundreds of pounds and far more than their face value. Their value is based on how many are available and demand, and if collectors are keen to get their hands on one this can push up the price. What makes a coin more valuable? Mintage figures are generally what collectors look at to work out its value. Low mintage makes it rare which often means it is more valuable, but that's not the only thing. Coin website Change Checker looks at how many of the coins have been collected by its members which shows how easy they may be to find (or not), and ranks them regularly. The experts also track the number of times a design has been requested as a swap over the previous three months, showing the current level of collector demand. While these indexes don't necessarily correspond to value, it can be an effective indicator. Coins with errors like a misprint can also be worth more than face value. A rare error on a 5p coin means it sold for £161 - more than 3,000 times its original value. 3
