Aberdeen can “easily” negotiate “inconvenient” Brexit, says Gilbert

Aberdeen Asset Management chief executive Martin Gilbert has said that he harbours no worries for his business in the case of a British exit from the EU.

Addressing the issue at the Future of Financial Services conference in London this week, Mr Gilbert said: “It would certainly be inconvenient, but I am not going to come out and tell the voter in the UK how to vote.”

Mr Gilbert went on: “We can easily survive a British exit because we have a large operation in Luxembourg.”

He added: “I think what it will do is it will not help the repatriation of funds back from Luxembourg to the UK until the vote is over.”

Mr Gilbert, who created and now heads Europe’s biggest fund manager, said he was more concerned about the impact a rise in interest rates will have on the bond market, which he said was currently posing a systemic risk.

The US is expected to raise interest rates for the first time since the financial crisis at some point in the coming months leading to wide felt anxiety about the market impact if many investors look to sell fixed income holdings at the same time.

While Mr Gilbert noted that geared credit funds would be most at risk in such a scenario, he said he could see buying opportunities for Aberdeen in any panic firesale of assets, though he still hoped any fall-out would be a “damp squib”.

He said: “If you don’t have to sell, it’s going to be okay. But if you do have to sell … it’s going to be difficult days in the market because liquidity has diminished.”

He added: “Where it worries me, and I think worries regulators as well, is that a lot of money has come out of bank accounts and into bond funds, and the world’s wealthy own no bonds, so it’s really quite a significant issue where the bonds are held (by) … the people who can least afford to lose the money.”