And this morning, we’ll do what we typically do and do a review of the business, but we thought it would be very, very helpful to have Mark provide some perspective on our Global Institutional business and highlight the capabilities where we’re seeing the greatest interest from clients and consultants. Loren will go into the financial results in greater detail, and then the 3 of us are more than happy to answer anybody’s question. We’ll be speaking to the presentation that’s available on our website. In addition to myself, Loren Starr, Invesco’s CFO and also Mark Armour is on the call with us today who leads our Institutional business. Thank you very much, and thank you, everybody, for joining us.
Now let me hit the summary of the financial results for the quarter. Net flows for the quarter were $9.2 billion, including net long term flows of $6.6 billion. And again, Loren will go into greater detail when he review the financials. This continues the positive trend we’ve demonstrated over the past several quarters. Adjusted operating income for the quarter was $272 million and the operating margin was 36.2%. Assets under management ended the quarter at $641 billion versus $616 billion at the end of the fourth quarter, reflecting the improved markets and also the strong momentum across our business globally.
So first and foremost, Real Estate, look, we have a very highly regarded capability here. And these are the ones that are typically getting large investment made. We’ve been investing in the markets since the early 80s and we’re in about the direct Real Estate business as well as Real Estate securities or REITS. And I think as most of you are aware, we just recently strengthened our platform with an acquisition in Asia late last year. Let’s now move on, if we can, to Slide 12. And what I want to do is really talk to you a little bit about some of the investment capabilities that we’re seeing gain a lot of traction globally.
The strong team is designed from the strong position we have in the models to maintain very low staff turnover, which in turn has enabled us to continue to fine tune the capability that we’ve got. And this in turn relates frankly to very good results for our clients in both the REIT space as well as the direct Real Estate space.
but also in other parts of the world, including Asia-Pacific and Europe. Right at the moment, we’re seeing terribly strong interest in Real Estate globally, and in contrast to what we saw a couple of years ago, it’s not in REITS but rather now in the direct Real Estate space. And what’s interesting, not just in the U.S.
In terms of interest, what we see is that globally, our retail client is going to be most interested in the traditional Premia Plus capability, which is investing in cost asset classes. And that industry is very strong in North America, so U.S. By contrast, we’ve seen quite an interest in the Premia Plus Institutional space but more so on the commodities only capability and this is something that we seem to be differentiated from our clients. So strong interest there and frankly, really strong growth over the last 18 months. and Canada, but also in Europe.
We’ve been managing this asset classes since the mid-80s. And then we are unusual, even unique, [indiscernible] managers to the extent that we do, as part of our process, use other managers and that gives us some nice diversification. Asset growth has been strong, $42 billion right at the moment. First and foremost, we’ve had an equal focus on maintaining good value, not simply on getting returns, and I think that helped us through the crisis. Look, we’ve mentioned this before, like Real Estate, it’s an area where we’re seen as the market leader. Clearly, they’re well behind us. I think people were aware, we did have some issues here a few years ago. The strength of our structured credit team, I think, is a differentiator and hopefully outperformance in 2009, too, but also to us, two other things are important. Stable value.
And so that means to say, these are translating into quite an advocacy, better rating, in that in turn is the harbinger in my mind for proof of better flows in the future. Equity, Global estimates return fixed income Real Estate Commodities and Risk Parity. On the consultant side, we’re seeing a broad range of activity across a wide range of a very stable value, bank loans, U.S. Value Equity, Asian Equity, including, importantly, Chinese Equity, Global and Global ex U.S.
The performance fees were a big factor in terms of the revenue difference. During the quarter, we had $3.8 million compared to $18.7 million in the fourth quarter. You’ll remember in the fourth quarter, we had a $12 million performance fee that came from our Private Wealth Management group. The $3.8 million in performance fees this quarter came from Real Estate, our Australia business, as well as our Bank Loan area.
That increase was consistent with the increase in investment management fees, as well as average AUM. Moving on down, you’ll see the third-party distribution, service and advisory expense, which of course we net against our gross revenues, increased by $6.8 million or 2.3%. That was due to lower Real Estate transactions fees in the quarter. Foreign exchange added $3.6 million to these expenses in the quarter. UIT revenues were flat relative to Q4. Other revenues decreased $1.9 million or 5.5% relative to Q4.
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