Emerging markets drive Ashmore

14th Sep 2010 07:41

Fund manager Ashmore saw a big hike in profits last year as more money from existing clients meant assets under management increased steadily throughout the 12 months.The emerging markets specialist reported pre-tax profits of £217.2m in the year to June, up from £159.8m, on sales of £281.4m, up from £245.7m.Assets under management rose to $35.3bn from $24.9bn, as net subscriptions swung from an outflow of $7.5bn last year to an inflow of $7.6bn. Fund performance added a further $2.8bn to the total."Subscriptions were weighted predominantly to the most liquid themes, external debt and local currency as well as currency hedging/overlay. The majority of subscriptions were into segregated mandates with a number of further subscriptions from existing clients," Ashmore said. Corporate debt was another popular theme, it said."The opportunities for investment continue to be good across our investment themes although probably in a lower absolute return world than the last year in the more liquid markets," it said, adding "External and local currency debt benefit from the ongoing recognition by investors of the relative attractiveness of sovereign emerging market issuers over their developed world counterparts." The dividend for the year is 13p, up 8% on last year.