Aberdeen Asset Management CEO Martin Gilbert joined Stephanie Ruhle and David Westin on Bloomberg TV’s new flagship morning program, Bloomberg <GO>. He spoke about selling the company, hedge fund woes, emerging markets and his investment thoughts. Aberdeen’s shares climbed as much as 2.5 percent in London trading and were up 1.6 percent to 336.8 pence at 2:15 p.m. local time.
On selling Aberdeen:
“I have ruled it out. Being independent is absolutely vital to us as a business. So we have completely ruled it out.”
On SWIP purchase:
“We’re always looking at costs…We bought a big business from Lloyds Bank two years ago… We bought at precisely the right time in the market…It’s been a really, really good acquisition and we’re still working in a lot of integration there and taking out costs. So there’s still costs. But basically we have to ride out the cycle and wait for Asia and emerging markets to come back into fashion.”
On how long he plans to stay on as CEO:
“I made the mistake of saying I would retire when the great Alex Ferguson, who’s our greatest ever football manager, also from Aberdeen, said he would retire. And he retired the following week. My new line is now I have got to keep going as long as Martin Sorrell.”
