Aberdeen Standard Investments has confirmed the closure of a second fund in just over a week with the folding of its £526 million Global High Yield Bond Fund.
The move has been prompted by the withdrawal of Scottish Widows' 95% stake, part of the insurance firm's planned switch of two-thirds of its assets from ASI.
It comes the week after ASI announced it was closing its underperforming UK Recovery Equity Fund, which has £52 million of assets. Both funds will be wound up on October 22.
In 2018, Lloyds Group withdrew its £100 billion of funds from Aberdeen Asset Management after the latter merged with Standard Life, at that time a competitor of Scottish Widows for life assurance business.
But it agreed to keep one third of its assets with Aberdeen Standard after a legal ruling last year that Scottish Widows was in breach of its contract.
ASI told investors in its Global High Yield Fund its vastly reduced size would make it difficult to trade assets competitively.
It said: “Following consideration of the available options, we believe it is in the best interest of all shareholders to close the fund, liquidate all of the underlying assets and return the proceeds to investors.”
