Aberdeen half-year profit rises 8.5 percent

By Laurence Fletcher

LONDON (Reuters) - Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN.L) said on Tuesday that pretax profit before exceptional items and amortisation of intangibles for the six months to end-March rose to 47.3 million pounds, below some forecasts.

Analysts had expected profits of between 48 million pounds and 51 million pounds. A year ago the group reported a profit of 43.6 million pounds.

However, assets under management stood at 107.3 billion pounds at end-March, the group said, ahead of forecasts.

The interim dividend is 8 percent higher at 2.8 pence.

The group also said it had agreed to acquire Goodman Property Investors for an initial 89 million pounds, plus further payments linked to assets under management, and will fund the acquisition by issuing 65.1 million new shares.

Aberdeen has also identified annualised cost savings of more than 15 million pounds.

"What tends to happen when you're expanding as rapidly as we have been ... is that there isn't the same rigour as you'd expect. It's general housekeeping, not replacing people when they leave, looking at what you spend money on," Chief Executive Martin Gilbert said on a call to journalists.

He said there would not be redundancies among the firm's fund managers.