Martin Gilbert may not quite have the media profile he once did as the swashbuckling chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management and, later, joint leader of Edinburgh-based Standard Life Aberdeen.
But he remains a figure of substance on the UK fund management scene, where in recent years he has been steadily growing his latest venture.
AssetCo has been the vehicle through which he has built up his current business through the acquisition of a series of established investment firms. These have included eye-catching deals for Saracen Fund Managers, Revera Asset Management and SVM Asset Management in Scotland, and the near-£100 million takeover of River & Mercantile. AssetCo also holds a 30% stake in Parmenion, a platform for independent financial advisers.
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Saracen, Revera, SVM, and River & Mercantile have since December been brought by AssetCo under the River Global brand, sitting alongside Parmenion as the two underlying businesses.
But not every call made by AssetCo has worked out. Reporting its latest annual results today, the company highlighted costly write-downs on loss-making businesses as losses widened to £26.7 million in the year to September 30, from £8.5m the year before.
The company told the City that it sold its 70% equity interest in Rize, a thematic ETF (exchange-traded fund) specialist to ARK Invest LLP, in September, which was followed by a deal to principle to sell its interest in River & Mercantile Infrastructure LLP. “Each was a negative contributor to the group during the financial year ending 30 September 2023 and it was determined to be in shareholders’ interests to exit the businesses, thereby relieving the group of ongoing cash drag going forward,” AssetCo said.
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AssetCo added that an “environment of risk aversion, limited new business opportunities, and challenging cost pressures has persisted for several years” which more recently has been compounded by higher interest rates, and “none of these factors look set to soften imminently or quickly”.
It was against this backdrop that AssetCo and the wider UK equities market suffered outflows last year, though Mr Gilbert” noted optimistically that “there are tentative signs that overall market activity may finally be picking up”.
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