A British exit from the EU holds no terrors for Aberdeen Asset Management, chief executive Martin Gilbert has said.

The creator of Europe's biggest fund manager told a 'Future of Financial Services' conference in London: "It would certainly be inconvenient but I am not going to come out and tell the voter in the UK how to vote."

He went on: "We can easily survive a British exit because we have a large operation in Luxembourg. I think what it will do is it will not help the repatriation of funds back from Luxembourg to the UK until the vote is over."

Mr Gilbert warned that the bond market posed a systemic risk as and when interest rates rose, although he still hoped the fall-out would be a "damp squib".

He said: "If you don't have to sell, it's going to be OK. But if you do have to sell ... it's going to be difficult days in the market because liquidity has diminished."

Mr Gilbert added: "Where it worries me, and I think worries regulators as well, is that a lot of money has come out of bank accounts and into bond funds, and the world's wealthy own no bonds, so it's really quite a significant issue where the bonds are held (by) ... the people who can least afford to lose the money."

Funds most at risk would be geared credit funds, Mr Gilbert said.