Bostonia feature: The Art of Investing
This article was originally published in CFA magazine and Bostonia. Illustration by David Despau
Financial industry pioneer Mark Mobius’ approach to business is infused with skills he learned onstage. If a television reporter offers to show him questions in advance, he turns them down, preferring to improvise as his CFA acting professors taught him.
Mark Mobius sailed past the official retirement age decades ago, but still spends so much time jetting across the globe for work that he reportedly carries two passports. A financial industry pioneer, Mobius, 83, has a home in Singapore, but he spends the majority of his year visiting the countries and companies he’s looking to invest in. When he spoke with us, Mobius had just landed in Turkey from India; after we spoke, he was heading off to Dubai, then Singapore, then Sri Lanka, then back to India.
“You’re just constantly learning,” he says of his globetrotting. “I enjoy so much going to these countries and learning how things change.”
Mobius (CFA’58, COM’59) has never been married—except, he often says, to his work. In 2010, he joked with financial newspaper City A.M. that if he had married, “I’d probably be divorced by now because of all the traveling I do.” When the New York Times interviewed Mobius in 1993, the reporter asked when he last took a vacation. “I don’t take any,” he said, “because my vocation is my avocation.”
Since the mid-1980s, Mobius’ vocation has been investing in emerging markets. When individuals entrust their money to a mutual fund, he puts their pooled capital into companies and stocks in countries like Brazil and China, with the goal of turning a healthy profit for the fund.
Today, he’s a founding partner of Mobius Capital Partners, managing two emerging markets funds and investing millions in mid-sized companies throughout the world. “The amount we’re investing is only $160 million,” says Mobius. The “only” isn’t a humble brag; in Mobius’ previous job, the numbers were eye-popping. As executive chairman of Franklin Templeton’s emerging markets group, which he led for close to 30 years, he reportedly oversaw investments worth $50 billion—a figure that eclipses the GDP of most countries.
But Mobius wasn’t always a financial industry whiz. Before becoming a world traveler, he cycled through a range of professions—including nightclub pianist.