Mark Mobius, the founder and former fund manager of Templeton Emerging Markets (TEM) investment trust, has died in Singapore, age 89.
Mobius Capital Partners, the firm he co-founded in 2018 after leaving Franklin Templeton, said he was a “cherished mentor, partner and source of inspiration to all of us”.
Mobius joined Franklin Templeton in 1987 after being hired by John Templeton to run the Templeton Emerging Markets Group.
In his 31 years at the group he became a byword for emerging markets, ceaselessly flying around the world to visit companies and speak to investors.
Templeton Emerging Markets, the first public fund focused on the asset class, generated an average 13.4% annual return under his tenure, according to Morningstar, beating the MSCI Emerging Markets index by 1.9% a year. Today it has a market value of £2.6bn and is still the largest fund in its London-listed sector.
“His influence was extraordinary, and his vision helped shape both our firm and the industry,” said Mobius Capital Partners alongside a photograph of Mobius with Carlos Hardenberg, who succeeded him as the manager of TEM before co-founding Mobius Capital Partners after also leaving Franklin Templeton with his mentor.
Mohammed El-Eiran, former chief executive of US bond fund manager PIMCO, posted on X: “Mark was a pioneer in the world of emerging market investing, spending decades as a tireless and honest promoter of the asset class he helped bring to the global stage. With this and his analytical brilliance, he inspired so many of us in the industry.”
Philip Ehrmann, former emerging markets manager at Jupiter, said he met Mobius two or three times and admired his contribution. On LinkedIn he posted: “He was passionate about the asset class and helped us all develop our understanding of the rapidly changing opportunities it represented.”
Born in New York in 1936 to German and Puerto Rican parents, Mobius studied Communications at Boston University before taking a PhD in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964.
According to Wikipedia, he once ran an independent consulting company that marketed Snoopy cartoon merchandise among other goods. His financial career started at broker Vickers-da-Costa and he served as president of the International Investment Trust Company in Taiwan before joining Franklin Templeton.
He later renounced his US citizenship after applying for his German passport.
Here is a video on the Institutional Investor website with Mobius discussing the start of his career and working with John Templeton.
Our view
James Carthew, head of investment company research at QuotedData, said: “Mark Mobius was the face of emerging markets investing for decades. He had been running Templeton Emerging Markets for a while when I got the job of managing the M&G Fund of Investment Trusts in 1995. His enthusiasm for the asset class, even in the face of the dramatic selloff in the late ‘90s and the many twists and turns since, was infectious. RIP.”
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