Emerging market veteran Mark Mobius dies

Credit: K. Y. Cheng/South China Morning Post via Getty Images.

Mark Mobius, a veteran of investing in emerging markets, has died at the age of 89. 

Mobius spent a chunk of his career at Franklin Templeton, which he joined in 1987 to run the Templeton Emerging Markets Group.  

He was known for his management of the Templeton Emerging Markets (NYSE:EMF) trust, which is comfortably the biggest name in its peer group with a market capitalisation of around £2.6 billion. 

In 2018, he began a new venture, co-founding Mobius Capital Partners.  

Mobius had a varied life, having worked as a political consultant and market researcher and run a research business that branched out into equity analysis. 

He would later work at Vickers da Costa, an investment firm, and went on to become president of the Mega International Investment Trust in Taipei, according to his personal website. 

The site describes him as “the Indiana Jones of emerging market investing” and notes that in his time he visited 112 countries, wrote 15 books and invested in more than 5,000 companies.

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Born in New York in 1936 to German and Puerto Rican immigrants, he would go on to study fine arts and communications at Boston University, followed by a PhD in Economics from MIT and postdoctoral studies at Kyoto University.  

As a quote from Mobius himself put it: “I’d put in enough time on commercial flights to earn myself a number of frequent-flier first-class flights to the Moon. I’d toured rubber plantations in Thailand and road-tested bikes over the pothole-ridden roads of rural China.  

“I’d choked on roasted camel’s meat, sheep’s eyeball, guinea pig and dined (surprisingly well) on scorpions on toast. I’d hobnobbed with princes, potentates, and pashas, and been swindled in souks so labyrinthine I’m still amazed I ever found my way out.”