Mark Mobius, who put emerging markets on investors’ radar with on-the-ground insights over more than four peripatetic decades, has died. He was 89.
He died on Wednesday, according to a post on his LinkedIn page attributed to his spokeswoman, Kylie Wong. John Ninia, a partner at Mobius Investments, said he died in Singapore.
With more than 30 years at Franklin Templeton Investments, now officially Franklin Resources Inc, Mobius became an advocate for investment opportunities in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. In a crowd of investment advisers, he was distinctive, in part, for his impeccably shaved head, which inspired the nickname “Bald Eagle”.
Hired in 1987 by John Templeton, a pioneer in leading American investors to companies abroad, Mobius started one of the first mutual funds dedicated to rapidly developing new markets. He oversaw the Templeton Emerging Markets Group until 2016, was lead manager of its flagship Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust until 2015 and retired in January 2018.
“Mark Mobius is to emerging market investing what Colonel Sanders is to fried chicken,” Peter Douglas, a principal at the Singapore chapter of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association, said when Mobius stepped aside as portfolio manager.
“He is the icon of the industry and has been the global cheerleader of emerging markets.”
Partly based in Singapore, Mobius travelled 250 to 300 days a year in a Gulfstream IV private jet, visiting factories and distributors in remote corners of the globe to identify investment opportunities.
He correctly predicted the start of a bull market that began in 2009, snapped up bargains during the Asian financial crisis after Thailand floated its currency in 1997 and bought Russian stocks as panic selling took hold in Russia in 1998.
He was also one of the first institutional investors to identify Africa as a promising frontier market, setting up the Templeton Africa Fund in 2012.