LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) - British fund firm Aberdeen AssetManagement on Tuesday posted a 40 percent fall infirst-half underlying pretax profit, hit by a broad slump inemerging markets.
The firm said said underlying pretax profits in the sixmonths to end-March were 162.9 million pounds while revenuesfell 20 percent to 483.6 million pounds.
Declines across many of the firm's main emerging marketshave triggered months of outflows, pushing assets undermanagement down from 330.6 billion to 292.8 billion pounds,although the firm said it had seen some signs of demand for itsequity products recently.
"These results reflect challenging conditions Aberdeen hasfaced during past three years, in particular weakness inemerging markets," Martin Gilbert, Chief Executive of AberdeenAsset Management, said in a statement.
In response, the firm said it remained vulnerable to furtheroutflows over the next few quarters.
Aberdeen said it would pay an interim dividend of 7.5 pencea share and planned to deliver 70 million pounds of annualisedcost efficiencies during 2017. (Reporting by Simon Jessop, editing by Sinead Cruise)