The years since 1983 have been a lot kinder to one major Aberdeen institution than it has to another.

That year Aberdeen Football Club, under Alex Ferguson, burst into football’s top flight with its European Cup Winners Cup triumph.

In the same year, Martin Gilbert formed Aberdeen Asset Management via the management buy-out of a £50m investment trust.

Today, despite the defeat of Rangers at the weekend, the football team struggles to make an impact at domestic let alone international level.

This causes some distress to Gilbert, a director of the club, and fellow Dons fan finance director Bill Rattray.

But this is compensated for by the fact their fund management business can, thanks to a number of astute acquisitions over the years, claim to be the largest independent fund manager in Europe and a global force.

Yesterday it revealed that assets under management increased to £146.2bn, up 32% on the year before. Some £35bn of funds acquired from Credit Suisse in a deal at the end of last year, outweighed net outflows of £11bn.

It reported a profit before tax of £85.1m in the year to November 30, against £95.1m last year excluding £44m of exceptional costs from acquiring and integrating Credit Suisse’s asset management business and one-off charges from a cost-cutting drive.

Its shares soared as much as 4% in early trading as investors digested news that assets under management were ahead of most forecasts and the company has a pipeline of £3.6bn of future deals.

In a falling market, the stock settled back to close at a 1p or 0.7% gain at 140p.

Aberdeen is still seeing large fund flows into global and emerging market funds. A key attraction is the investment process overseen by Aberdeen Asset Management Asia chief executive Hugh Young who established a Singapore office to run the company’s assets in the region in 1992.

Aberdeen has also posted strong performance in American equities, not traditionally seen as its strongest area, over the last few years which could draw in clients.

There are still weak points. The company’s fixed income team struggled to cope with market volatility last year, prompting large outflows.

Rattray acknowledged yesterday: “We suspect there may be a bit more to flow out in fixed income.”

But he signalled there would be little change to the way it operated in the sector maintaining the rebound “demonstrates we are managing the money the way we said we would”.

One tweak was the February appointment of Credit Suisse manager Paul Griffiths as global head of fixed income. He has added a wider macroeconomic view to the team.

Aberdeen is also seen by many in the market as relatively weak in UK equities. The team pursues much the same investment approach as in Asia but this has failed to generate the same returns.

In an effort to reassure clients, in the summer the company installed Jeremy Whitley, a veteran of its global and Asian equities desk, as head of UK and European equities - to add “grey hairs” as one insider put it - to the youthful operation.

Aberdeen has snapped up a number of rival Scottish fund houses over the years including in 2000 Murray Johnstone, Edinburgh Fund Managers three years later and boutique Glasgow Investment Managers in 2007.

But even before the Credit Suisse deal it has looked abroad with the 2007 purchase for £265m of Deutsche Asset Management, which tripled its assets under management, a key deal.

Its major weak point came after 2002 as the split capital trust market in which Aberdeen was one of the biggest players collapsed in dramatic fashion.

Thousands of investors lost money and Gilbert was styled as a “sophisticated snake-oil salesman” by MPs on the House of Commons treasury committee.

Despite dolling out millions in compensation, Aberdeen survived. It is now focused largely on the institutional market and has relentlessly pursued its acquisition strategy.

It tends to take the assets, and in some cases the fund managers though they have a habit of leaving the company after a few months. But most of the back office infrastructure is left behind allowing Aberdeen to reap the benefits of the economies of scale. The Credit Suisse deal added only around 100 people to the pay roll.

Its eyes are now fixed on new areas of distribution. The Credit Suisse deal gave it new contacts on the continent, notably a route into the Credit Suisse private bank.

What it covets now is a big US distribution deal. It has an office in Philadelphia, which was boosted by its acquisition of active US equity asset management business of Nationwide Financial Services, former owner of UK-based Gartmore. The deal gave it £3.5bn of assets at the time. It has also recently opened an office in Toronto. Yet it still lacks scale.

Rattray told The Herald: “In the US we would like to be a bit bigger. We can grow organically but if there was something that came along to allow us to grow these more we would look at it.”

Market conditions are on their side.

Rattray said: “It seems to us there are a number of banks and possibly insurers that have taken the view that it is an ideal time for them to exit fund management.”

With the tumult in financial markets appearing to be nearing its end, these companies can now sell off divisions without scaring customers and investors that they are conducting some form of fire sale.

Another deal is not necessarily imminent. Rattray told The Herald: “We don’t need to find acquisitions but we are entirely happy to look at opportunities.”

But unlike the Dons Aberdeen Asset Management has a record of creating chances and taking them.