Dr. Joseph Mark Mobius (born August 17, 1936) is a global investor and emerging markets fund manager, and is considered to be one of the leaders in the industry[1] as he has been involved in these markets for over 40 years.[2]
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Joseph Benhard Mark Mobius was born to German and Puerto-Rican parents in Hempstead, New York. He earned his B.A. and M.S. in Communications from Boston University, and received a Ph.D in economics from MIT in 1964.[3] He also studied at the University of Wisconsin, University of New Mexico, and Kyoto University in Japan. He joined Templeton in 1987 as president of the Templeton Emerging Markets Fund (NYSE: EMF), a closed end mutual fund, and there integrated his knowledge of new international markets with Sir John Templeton's disciplined, long term approach to investing.[4] This was the first emerging market equity fund available to US investors,[5] and Mobius' one key condition to take on this challenge was that Templeton must open its first emerging market office, which it did in Hong Kong.[5]
His current duties include managing over 50 closed-end and open-end mutual funds worldwide including 17 offices overseas.[2]
Before joining Templeton, Mobius worked at international securities firm Vickers-da-Costa, and later was president of International Investment Trust Company in Taipei, Taiwan. He once ran an independent consulting company that marketed among other things, Snoopy cartoon merchandise.
Born a U.S. citizen, Mobius was also entitled to German citizenship by descent. He renounced his U.S. citizenship and is now a German.[6]
Because of his in-depth knowledge of emerging markets, Mobius has been a key figure in developing international policy for emerging markets. In 1999, he was selected to serve on the World Bank's Global Corporate Governance Forum as a member of the Private Sector Advisory Group and as co-chair of the Investor Responsibility Taskforce.[7] He has also been featured as a speaker [8] for the World Bank in 1999 and has given seminars for many other groups, including for the Asian Development Bank in 2002[9] and as a motivational speaker for the London Speaker Bureau.[10]
As a recognized industry expert, Mobius appears frequently on financial industry television shows and networks, including Bloomberg, CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN, and has given/written thousands of interviews and opinion pieces over the years.
In addition, Mobius has earned numerous accolades from the investment industry.[2] Among them are:
Mobius has also been given various humorous nicknames over the years, including the "Pied Piper of emerging markets",[11] the "dean of emerging markets",[12] a world "globetrotter",[13][14] and the Yul Brynner of Wall Street[15] due to his signature bald head look.
Mobius is also a regular monthly columnist for the Asia Tatler group of magazines , wherein he authors a column on "Wealth"[16]
A comic book on the life of Mark Mobius was published in 2007: "Mark Mobius - An Illustrated Biography of the Father of Emerging Markets Funds" is currently translated into six languages (English, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Thai and Japanese) and available in numerous countries. [17]