Aberdeen Asset Management 's (ADN) epic battle to diversify and digitise its fund management offering moved forward on one front after its acquisition of investment manager Parmenion.
Fund groups have become mindful of the threat to their businesses from global technology giants launching rival products - Google has investigated how it could enter the investment management market, while Facebook has dipped a toe into financial services with peer-to-peer money transfers.
Aberdeen boss Martin Gilbert told US broadcaster CNBC earlier this year that managers had to innovate in the face of this disruptive threat.
Parmenion, named after a Macedonian general, provides an online platform of risk-graded investment strategies, something which has found a growing retail audience via financial advisers keen to outsource the allocation and administration of their clients' investments in a toughening regulatory environment.
A clear attraction of the deal is the 900 hard-won relationships with financial adviser companies that Parmenion boasts, which has helped it build up £1.9bn in assets. Aberdeen's stock exchange announcement talked about the latter's "ability to allocate" assets to its quantitative investment strategies.
These are not 'tied' advisers, though, bound to recommend a certain company, and neither will Parmenion's in-house team be automatically pouring money into its new parents' funds. "We are not under any pressure to pick Aberdeen funds," Simon Brett, chief investment officer at Parmenion, said. Regardless, the scale of Aberdeen provides its target with deeper pockets and a household name to be able to grow its adviser base.
Aberdeen has also recently completed the purchase of US private equity and real asset manager FLAG Capital Management. This added $6bn (£3.9bn) in invested and committed capital, bringing Aberdeen's private equity assets to about $15bn in total, making it a significant player in the space.
This pales in comparison to the 2014 acquisition of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip) from Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY). As well as bringing onboard fixed income, quantitative equities, infrastructure, and private equity assets valued at £138bn in April 2014, Aberdeen said it hoped further relationships and assets would flow from a relationship with Lloyds' wealth, insurance and retail businesses. Across the board, Swip has seen £14bn of gross business inflows since the acquisition last year.
