Aberdeen Asset Management yesterday raised £97.65m from investors to purchase fund manager Goodman Property Investors for an initial £89m.

Another £21m likely to be paid out over the next two years, depending on fund flows.

The deal, which comes just weeks after the company bought German property fund manager DEGI, makes the company a top-10 property asset manager.

Finance director Bill Rattray said: "It is part of the ongoing diversification and brings a very good balance to the group assets under management."

Goodman specialises in UK property investment, which will allow Aberdeen to add this element to its burgeoning range of multi-asset fund offerings.

The £7bn of assets Goodman Property Investors brings with it will also be particularly welcome at a time when Aberdeen, like many fund managers, is struggling to retain assets held by investors nervous about faltering stock markets.

Aberdeen announced yesterday it had made an underlying pre-tax profit of £47.3m in the six months to March 31, compared to £43.6m the year before. This represents underlying earnings per share, on a diluted basis, of 4.71p compared to 5.07p after a fund-raising last year diluted the equity.

Gross fund inflows of some £10.8bn were almost entirely countered by withdrawals of some £10.3bn although the DEGI purchase helped overall funds under management to rise 12.6% to £107.3bn at March 31.

It also wrote off some £4.7m from the launch of a French property fund it had to abort after one of the investors pulled out.

This slight underperformance of expectations left investors disappointed.

Aberdeen's shares closed down 4p, or 2.85%, yesterday at 145p.

The company has pledged to cut £15m a year from its cost base and even more if the market downturn continues.

Rattray said: "In the good times you do tend to build up a little bit of fat."

He declined to confirm what this would mean for job numbers at the house but said some savings would be made by not replacing staff who leave.

"Headcount is misleading because quite a lot is back-office and middle-office people," he said.

But Rattray did acknowledge that staff costs were a big element of their costs and that the asset management company would also be seeking to renegotiate some third party contracts.

Company chief executive Martin Gilbert said of the cuts: "This will put us in an even better position to seize some of the opportunities that these markets are creating and build value over the long term."

Aberdeen is to pay an interim dividend of 2.8p per share, an increase of 8% on the equivalent payment last year.

This interim dividend will be paid on June 19 to shareholders on the register at May 16.