Perpetual Private Wealth has emerged as one of the few bright spots for the group as it reported a 29 per cent decline in net profit for the year attributable to members to $128,813,000.

The company’s results revealed that Perpetual Private Wealth achieved an 8 per cent increase in operating profit before tax of $46.4 million, while Perpetual Investments and Perpetual Corporate Trust both ended the year in negative territory.

However, while the profit line for Perpetual Private Wealth remained in positive territory, the group’s funds under management actually declined from $8.4 billion to $7.7 billion for the period. The company said that this was largely due to lower equity markets.

The company pointed out that the Perpetual Private Wealth result had been based on an 18 per cent increase in the number of client-facing employees and expansion into South Australia via the acquisition of Argosy Wealth Consultants.

The company announced to the Australian Securities Exchange today that while revenue from ordinary activities and excluding revenue from structured investments had increased by 6 per cent, profit after tax and before gains realised on the sale of investment and exact market cash fund losses was down 8 per cent.