Emerging market slump pushes Aberdeen H1 profits down by 40 pct

LONDON, May 3 (Reuters) - British fund firm Aberdeen Asset Management on Tuesday posted a 40 percent fall in first-half underlying pretax profit, hit by a broad slump in emerging markets.

The firm said said underlying pretax profits in the six months to end-March were 162.9 million pounds while revenues fell 20 percent to 483.6 million pounds.

Declines across many of the firm's main emerging markets have triggered months of outflows, pushing assets under management down from 330.6 billion to 292.8 billion pounds, although the firm said it had seen some signs of demand for its equity products recently.

"These results reflect challenging conditions Aberdeen has faced during past three years, in particular weakness in emerging markets," Martin Gilbert, Chief Executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, said in a statement.

In response, the firm said it remained vulnerable to further outflows over the next few quarters.

Aberdeen said it would pay an interim dividend of 7.5 pence a share and planned to deliver 70 million pounds of annualised cost efficiencies during 2017. (Reporting by Simon Jessop, editing by Sinead Cruise)