Aberdeen Asset Management saw £300million wiped off its market value after failing to reassure investors that there was any end in sight to the outflows from its flagship emerging markets funds.

Chairman Roger Cornick’s admission that the group remained “vulnerable to further outflows over the next few quarters as clients continue to react to the difficult conditions for performance over the last few years” helped depress the shares 7.5per cent. Still at 450p a year ago, the shares touched 209p in February, and closed down 22.3p at 276.4p valuing Aberdeen at £3.6billion.

Aberdeen was unveiling a near-halving of first-half pre-tax profit to £98.8m, from £185.4m a year ago, and a further £16.9bn of client outflows. The dividend was held at 7.5p, but is now only just covered by the group‘s profits, suggesting it may come under pressure.

Underlying profit was also down sharply, from £270m to £163m. Revenue fell by 20per cent to £483.6m.

Aberdeen employs around 500 in Edinburgh and 250 in Aberdeen, with a further 700 people in London and a worldwide staff across 38 offices of 2800.

Chief executive Martin Gilbert was typically upbeat in stressing the strength of the group’s balance sheet, which “has allowed us to continue to invest in the business, including the completion of a number of bolt-on acquisitions which have added new capabilities and new client channels”.

During the half, Aberdeen completed the acquisitions of hedge-fund manager Arden, ‘fintech’ platform Parmenion, and fund-of-funds investment manager Advance, adding £7.8bn of new assets, which was offset by the disposal of £1.7 bn of low-margin property management assets. Its alternatives business now has assets of £21.8bn.

Mr Gilbert went on: “We have strengthened the management team with senior appointments in distribution and operations. Our broad product suite and global distribution platform means we are well placed to meet the long-term needs of an ever increasing number of investors around the world.”

He said the hiring of Martin Jennings as head of digital showed Aberdeen was “fully prepared for fintech and the internet revolution”.

Mr Cornick said the cyclical slowdown in emerging markets was exacerbated by lower oil and commodity prices. Even though Aberdeen’s equity portfolios performed strongly against their benchmarks in the first four months of 2016, “this does not mean a dramatic improvement in new business flows is anticipated in the short term”, the chairman said.

Assets under management reached £292.8bn at March 31, up from £283.7bn six months earlier, with boosts from market movements and investment performance of £10.1 bn and foreign currency of £7.9 bn, as well as the new assets of £7.8 bn, more than offsetting net outflows of client money of £16.7 bn.

Mr Gilbert said it was still “early days” for any change in sentiment towards emerging markets, but said the group was seeing “the first shoots of interest”, particularly from private banks.

Mr Cornick said: “This provides encouragement for the longer term, but we envisage that markets may continue to provide challenges in the short term.”

Aberdeen, which fell out of the FTSE 100 index earlier this year, has promised to achieve £70m of “cost efficiencies” by 2017.

Steve Clayton at Hargreaves Lansdown, said despite being highly acquisitive, “if the share price continues to weaken, Aberdeen will be well aware that they themselves could start to appear on the radar screens of the industry’s largest players”.

Jason Hollands, managing director at Tilney Bestinvest, said the emerging market weakness had been exacerbated by poor relative performance across many of Aberdeen’s funds, but there was “light at the end of the tunnel” in global conditions. He added: “The recent moves to diversify the business further... shows the business clearly isn't just sitting around and waiting for a change in fortunes.”