Shares digital

by Simon Keane

There’s caution creeping into analysts’ views on emerging markets debt fund manager Ashmore. Ahead of last week’s third quarter interim management statement (IMS), Jason Street from independent broker Evolution reduced his recommendation from ‘buy’ to ‘add’. On the day, the IMS revealed client redemptions had out-numbered new sales chipping away at assets under management (AUM) by $800 million.

Relatively, that is not a huge number, and was almost neutralised by performance-related gains of $600 million. But the net result was that AUM fell $200 million to £36.3 billion. That number is much less than recent quarterly growth of around 10% and fell short of Street’s plus 1% expectation of AUM growth. The analyst is worried that the bombed out asset-backed US debt market, driven as it is at present by forced sellers, will prove too tempting for institutions who would otherwise have bought emerging market debt from Ashmore. Landsbanki’s Samir Shah, another independent broker, followed Street down moving ‘buy’ to ‘hold’ on the day