"According to our investment process, our fund managers make regular visits to companies with solid long-term prospects, to find the best investment ideas," said deputy CEO Robert Penaloza.

"Through company visits, notes are written every time with the help of our colleagues from other regional offices, to analyse and identify quality companies to invest in. Company revisits will be made at semi-annual intervals, to reaffirm that we have picked the right companies, with strong fundamentals and reasonable valuations. These investment processes and strategies are basically applied to the management of funds globally across the Aberdeen Group."

After last year's success in the initial public offering (IPO) of the Aberdeen Asia Pacific Equity Open-Ended Fund, the firm launched two more open-ended equity foreign-investment funds (FIFs) this year.

The Aberdeen World Opportunities Fund, with a policy of investing through the Aberdeen Global-World Equity Fund in companies worldwide that demonstrate potential, attracted overwhelming interest among market investors. It was fully subscribed in just four days after its IPO.

Over the last three years, the Aberdeen Global-World Equity Fund, the master fund of Thai-registered Aberdeen World Opportunities Fund, generated a generous return of 78.70 per cent. Aberdeen's latest offering, the Aberdeen European Growth Fund with a policy to invest in blue-chip companies in Europe through the Aberdeen Global-European Equity Fund also received an overwhelming response from investors with over Bt1.2 billion raised from its IPO.

Over the last three years, Aberdeen Global-European Equity Fund, the master fund of the Thai-registered Aberdeen European Growth Fund, delivered a handsome return of 69.6 per cent. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) again approved a firm additional US-dollar allocation, ensuring that its FIFs secured the largest slice of the SEC-allocation pie. The total asset size of its FIFs now exceeds Bt4.8 billion.

Furthermore, in early September, Aberdeen was appointed by the Government Pension Fund to manage an equity portion.

The recent market turbulence is another proof that Aberdeen's disciplined investment still works. Its funds delivered a stellar performance despite Black Tuesday, when the market suffered the largest single-day drop - more than 100 points - in reaction to the central bank's capital-controls announcement. In contrast, Aberdeen witnessed a massive buying force of its equity funds. It received inflows of up to Bt100 million into its long-term equity fund (LTF) on the same day.

"Net-asset value of Aberdeen's long-term equity fund dropped only 10.84 per cent against the steep 14.84-per-cent dive of the SET Index on December 19, making our LTF fund outperform the market on Black Tuesday," Penaloza said.