Veteran investor Mark Mobius, the bald-headed market guru who became one of the most recognized authorities on money-making opportunities in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, plans to retire from Franklin Templeton Investments after three decades at the firm.
The company announced his retirement, effective Jan. 31.
After accepting a job offer from money manager John Templeton in 1987, Mobius headed one of the first emerging-market equity fund available to U.S. customers. With a long-time base in Singapore, he traveled about 250 days a year in a Gulfstream IV private jet, visiting factories and distributors in remote corners of the globe to identify investment opportunities.
“There is no single individual who is more synonymous with emerging-markets investing than Mark Mobius," Templeton Chairman and CEO Greg Johnson said in a statement Friday.
‘Not Very Complicated’
Mobius, 81, who said he kept most of his own money in Templeton funds, made prescient calls on major market movements. 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.
“My idea of a bargain is, by the way, not very complicated,” he wrote in “Passport to Profits,” his 1999 book. “I buy stocks in companies with good growth potential over a five-year period.”
Born in Hempstead, New York to a German father and Puerto Rican mother, Mobius grew up on Long Island speaking German and Spanish at home. In 1955, he won a scholarship to study at Boston University and worked as a pianist at a nightclub to help pay for his tuition. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and a master’s in communications before completing a doctorate in economics and political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Yul Brynner Hairstyle
After working as a political consultant, Mobius traveled to Hong Kong for the first time in 1967 and became a market researcher for Monsanto Overseas Enterprises Co., testing a new high-protein drink. He then started his own research business, branching into securities analysis. His Yul Brynner hairstyle, as he described it, was conceived at this time after a fire in his apartment damaged his hair and he shaved the rest off, according to Mobius’s 1997 illustrated memoir.