(Reuters) -Emerging markets investment firm Ashmore Group Plc (LON:ASHM) on Thursday reported a drop of $9 billion in assets under management for the quarter to end-March, hit by a double whammy of outflows and lower market levels amid the war in Ukraine.
Ashmore said assets under management fell due to net outflows of $3.7 billion in equities and fixed income as well as a negative investment performance of $5.0 billion.
"The war in Ukraine is a humanitarian tragedy that will have far-reaching consequences for the existing world order," said Ashmore CEO Mark Coombs in a statement.
"The shock is likely to weigh on investor sentiment in the short term, but the consequences of the conflict will not be felt equally across the diversified set of more than 70 Emerging Market countries, as has already been seen with the impact of higher commodity prices."
Ashmore said it had outperformed benchmarks in its local currency, external debt and investment grade strategies across fixed income, and underperformed in corporate debt, blended debt and equities.
MSCI's emerging market equities benchmark has dropped nearly 10% since the start of the year while emerging market hard-currency debt as captured in the JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) EMBI Global Diversified index has racked up negative returns of nearly 12% over the same period.
Emerging market funds elsewhere have also felt the pressure.
The board of Jupiter Emerging & Frontier Income Trust said on Thursday it intends to put forward formal proposals to shareholders to wind up the company, highlighting a worsening international outlook.
Analysts said Ashmore's outflows had come in higher than expected.
"We expect the market to view this update negatively, but note that Ashmore's share price is reflective of the current negative performance," Bjorn Zietsman at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods said in a note to clients.
Ashmore shares dropped as much as 4% in early trade before clawing back some of their losses to trade down just over 1%. The stock is down nearly 24% since the start of the year.