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ABERDEEN ASSET MANAGEMENT

Aberdeen Asset Management PLC is an international investment management group, managing assets for both institutional and retail clients from offices around the world.

Over two decades we have expanded through a combination of organic growth and acquisition, then by seeking selectively to manage and/or market funds in countries in which we already invest.

We operate flat management structures to facilitate local decision-making, underpinned by clear lines of control and central reporting.
Our house style is fundamental and process-driven. Active management is the bedrock of our equity process; a similar approach characterises currency and fixed income management, with alpha generated by identifying market inefficiencies. In property, the focus is on high risk adjusted returns through advanced portfolio modelling and, again, active management.

At Aberdeen, asset management is all that we do
We have no ties to other financial institutions, allowing us to focus on our clients’ interests. We now manage over $235 billion(1) of third party assets from our 24 offices in 21 countries around the world.

Our clients access our investment expertise across the three asset classes: equities, fixed income and property. We package our skills in the form of segregated and pooled products across borders. We invest worldwide and follow a predominantly long-only approach, based on fundamentally sound investments - we do not chase market fads. Aberdeen’s investment teams are based in the markets or regions in which they invest. Clients understand our process and portfolios because they are transparent.

(1) as at 30 June 2008

Global reach, local understanding
We know global markets from the local level upwards. We believe our focus, size and approach enable us to provide effective asset management and superior client service.

Our teams champion original thinking and knowledge, so investment decisions are based only on our own research.  As a group, we have the scale to provide global coverage of financial markets, yet we are small enough to focus on each and every portfolio decision.

Close-knit teams, clear investment processes and flat structures are important to us. We seek to grow our clients’ assets in  a way that is manageable and sustainable over the longer term.

Aberdeen in Australia
Aberdeen commenced its Australian operations in December 2000, and currently has around 8 billion(1) in assets under management and advice. In addition to managing the investments of a number of Australian registered funds, Aberdeen in Australia also manages the Aberdeen Group’s Australian and New Zealand assets for a range of global and domestic clients including a listed investment company and institutional clients.

(1) as at 30 June 2008

Our investment philosophy and process
The Aberdeen equity process dates from the early 1990s. The process is continuously evolving but its central tenets are: an emphasis on original research, the identification of businesses that we can understand, and the avoidance of overpaying for stocks.
The strengths of our approach are:

  1. Active management: we aim to add value by identifying good quality securities which are attractively priced.
  2. Proprietary research: we always visit companies before investing, making thousands of visits every year.  If a stock fails our screens, we will not own it.
  3. Long-term focus: we look for companies that will create profits over time and we ignore ‘market noise’, hence our portfolio turnover is low.
  4. Team approach: the emphasis is on collective wisdom, not the cultivation of ‘star managers’.

The Aberdeen Asian Opportunities Fund
The Aberdeen Asian Opportunities Fund seeks to provide investors with high capital growth over the medium to long term (3-5 years) by seeking exposure to Asian (excluding Japan) equities.

The Fund is characterised by the following features:

  1. a bottom-up approach based on proprietary company research and rigorous quality screens
  2. exposure to a high conviction, diversified portfolio of around 35-55 stocks
  3. index aware but unconstrained by the benchmark
  4. low turnover.- the average turnover is around 4 years
  5. low cash allocations (cash is treated as a residual and the Fund aims to be fully invested)

Aberdeen is one of the largest, best resourced and most respected names in Asia Pacific regional asset management, with over 20 years of experience investing in the region.

Investors in the Aberdeen Asian Opportunities Fund benefit from Aberdeen’s robust investment process in which quality is the key. Our process is disciplined, replicable and consistent and we always visit a company before investing. We tend to favour companies which can grow across the full business cycle and our company visits and research notes give deeper insights and differentiate us from peers.