Aberdeen Asset Management is not for sale and founder Martin Gilbert has no intentions to step back or sell out, the company has said.

On a recent report that founder Mr Gilbert, 60, has been looking in the City for a buyer, marketing director James Thorneley said: “We are not for sale, we are more likely to be acquiring businesses. Martin is 60 but he has got a huge appetite to continue to lead the company and build on the strong foundations we have got today.”

It has also been reported that last year’s £600m acquisition of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership in Edinburgh will prompt the announcement of more job losses when Aberdeen reports full-year results today.

Mr Gilbert has said that following the 12-18 month integration of Swip, a small number of roles were now surplus to requirements, and people retiring over the next few months would not be replaced, though no investment roles would be affected.

Mr Thorneley commented: “In this kind of environment all companies looking at their cost bases, we are no different, and there are lots of areas we can look at for synergies particularly having completed these mergers.”

Aberdeen employs 502 in Edinburgh, including its global equities, pan-European equities, investment solutions, fixed interest and property teams, and a further 257 in Aberdeen. It has 700 people in London and a worldwide staff across 38 offices of 2800.

When the mainly share-based deal was done last year, the £550m purchase price was based on a 420p a share evaluation for Aberdeen shares. They were trading at below 340p yesterday.

Mr Thorneley said the deal was “really well-timed, it made us financially stronger and enabled us to weather the downturn in emerging markets better than we would have been able to do without SWIP”.

Aberdeen’s performance in emerging markets will again come under scrutiny, following outflows of £11.8billion in the first half and £9.9bn in the third quarter largely due to investor sentiment towards Aberdeen’s traditional area of strength.

But the demand by institutions for alternative investments is likely to drive another clutch of acquisitions during 2016.

“Next year we will possibly do three to five bolt-on acquisitions,” Mr Thorneley. “They would be similar to the ones we have done this year which basically strengthen existing capabilities or provide a new distribution channel for us.”

He said Flag, a US-Asia private equity manager, had given Aberdeen a global platform in an important asset class, complementing its offering in Europe which had already been bolstered by last year’s major acquisition of SWIP.

Similarly the Arden fund of hedge funds group had extended Aberdeen’s capability in that area from Europe to the US.

“We are seeing a huge trend amongst institutional investors towards alternative asset classes,” Mr Thorneley said. “They are basically seeking different risk-return profiles for their portfolios and they want to diversify away from equities and bonds.”

Globally alternatives are predicted to almost double in size to $15trillion by 2020. In the past three months, Aberdeen has raised $500m for a fund of hedge funds and $300m for a private equity fund through the new teams it has acquired.

The Parmenion fintech (financial technology) company in Bristol had added an important dimension in online distribution, Mr Thorneley said. “It’s an online platform to support advisers with retail investors’ pension planning, and with all the increased onus on the individual to save for retirement it is going to grow and grow, we are very optimistic for it.”

On the gloom surrounding its core area, he said: “Things have been tough in emerging markets but long-term we continue to believe they are going to be the driving engine of global growth over the next five, 10, 20 years. What we are seeing now is a cyclical downturn and they will come back.”