Mark Mobius, 1936-2026
Mark Mobius, the fund manager who helped establish emerging markets as a mainstream institutional asset class, died on Wednesday at the age of 89. A statement posted to his LinkedIn account confirmed the death but gave no cause.
Mobius earned a reputation as the "Indiana Jones" of his field, encouraging investors to take chances on Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe at a time when institutional capital largely avoided those markets. He spent decades at Franklin Templeton before founding his own firm, and was among the earliest Western fund managers to deploy capital into Hong Kong and mainland China. He remained bullish on China throughout his career, a conviction he maintained into his final years of active management.
In recent years Mobius was based in Dubai, from where he continued to manage the Mobius Emerging Opportunities Fund as its managing director. His longevity in the industry was unusual: few fund managers of his generation remained operationally active into their late eighties.
His influence on the asset management industry extended beyond his own returns. By repeatedly making the case for frontier and emerging economies, he shaped the allocation frameworks that now underpin multi-trillion-dollar index products and dedicated EM mandates.
