UK - Schroders saw pre-tax profits rise by 30% in the first half of this year and assets under management are up despite a fresh outflow of institutional business.

In a trading statement issued this morning, Schroders reported pre-tax-profits rose to £93.2m
(€136.5m) to March 31 2007 and funds under management have climbed from £128.5bn in the same period last year to £132.3bn, albeit £1.3bn of the £2.5bn gain came from the acquisition of European property manager Aareal Asset Management earlier this year.

In contrast, however, its institutional business has seen net outflows of £2.5bn, concentrated mainly in the UK, and £1.4bn of which was the loss of a Strathclyde balanced mandate in January 2007.

This compared with net inflows of £1.5bn through retail business and profits from its private equity arm which leapt £19.9m, up from £7.2m in the same period last year.

Elsewhere, Aberdeen Asset Management has seen its assets under management rise almost 10% to £80.4bn in its six-months fiscal reporting period to March 31 2007.

The fund management house reports it saw "record half-year net new business of £7.6bn"and managed to counter the outflows of institutional business expected through its purchase of Deutsche Asset Management funds by pulling in new mandates.

Aberdeen's property investment offerings saw a shift of £756m out of the company but the firm brought in £3.5bn in fixed income and equity and multi-asset mandate wins through new and existing clients.

"We have been successful in mitigating the ongoing erosion of multi-asset mandates that we anticipated following the acquisition of the Deutsche Asset Management business in 2005 by converting a number of these into specialist mandates," said Martin Gilbert, chief executive of Aberdeen AM.