, a veteran investor and a pioneer in identifying and investing in developing economies, passed away at the age of 89 on Wednesday, 15 April. The news of his demise was shared in a post on his LinkedIn page, attributed to his spokeswoman, Kylie Wong.
According to John Ninia, a partner at Mobius Investments, Mobius died in Singapore. He was a popular figure among traders and investors for travelling extensively and building first-hand insights in markets that were largely overlooked by others, Bloomberg reported.
“John Ninia, Partner at Mobius Investments, and Eric Nguyen, Partner at Mobius Investments, will assume leadership responsibilities. The firm will continue to operate without changes to its investment approach or day-to-day operations,” the LinkedIn post read, though it did not mention a cause of death.
Why was Mobius known as the “Indiana Jones of emerging markets”?
Mark Mobius earned the nickname “Indiana Jones of emerging markets” because of his unusually adventurous, on-the-ground approach to , especially at a time when most investors avoided developing economies.
Like Indiana Jones, he was known for travelling into unfamiliar and often high-risk regions across Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. He visited a dozen countries each year, and claimed to have travelled to at least 112 nations, according to Reuters.
As the executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, where he worked for over 30 years, Mobius built a reputation for making bold, well-timed investment calls across global markets.
He correctly predicted the start of a bull market that began in 2009, capitalised on undervalued opportunities during the Asian financial crisis after Thailand floated its currency in 1997 and bought Russian stocks amid panic selling during a financial crisis in the country in 1998.
Apart from profiting from crises, 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, Bloomberg reported.
Having invested in emerging markets for decades, Mobius was actively eyeing new opportunities as recently as January. On , he wrote, “with (President Nicolas) Maduro’s exit, we may see a new political and economic order and the country could be reopening to investors.”
From education to personal life — All about Mark Mobius
The veteran investor pursued a PhD in political science and economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964. Upon completion, he took a job with International Research Associates, where he conducted surveys and other consumer research in Thailand and Korea for a year each.
After that, he ended up in Hong Kong, where he started his own industrial research consulting firm. Mobius has also written a dozen books on investing and economics, including The Investor’s Guide to Emerging Markets (1994) and Passport to Profits (1999).
He never got married. In his book Passport to Profits, he wrote that there were costs and benefits to being a “full-time nomad,” referring to his frequent travel across the world. “Though some people probably pity me for having no home, no family, no domestic life to speak of,” he wrote, “my somewhat eccentric lifestyle offers untold opportunities for variety, stimulation and creativity.”
(With wire inputs)
