John Templeton, global investing pioneer, dies at 95

Eventually, he said, all securities and assets will be priced according to their future earnings

John Templeton, the billionaire US philanthropist who made his fortune as the pioneer of global investing in the postwar boom, has died. He was 95.

Templeton died Tuesday at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, the Bahamian island that was his home, his spokesman, Don Lehr, said in a statement. The cause was pneumonia.
The Templeton Growth Fund was one of the first mutual funds to give Americans access to investments in companies abroad.

Since its start in 1954, the fund has returned 13.5% a year on average, meaning a $10,000 investment would be valued at about $8.5 million as of March 31, including reinvested dividends and capital-gains distributions.

Like Warren Buffett, Templeton developed a cult following, with fund investors flocking to annual meetings to hear his pronouncements. Money magazine in 1999 called him “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century.”

A devout Presbyterian, Templeton may be remembered as much for financing the study of spirituality as for his canny investments.

In 1972, he set up the $1 million-plus Templeton Prize. Mother Teresa was the first recipient, six years before she collected the Nobel Peace Prize. He always made sure that his award offered more money than the Nobel Prizes.

“What we say about investments isn’t as lasting as what we say about spiritual matters,” Templeton, who was a board member of the American Bible Society, said in a 1993 interview from his home in the Bahamas.

Investing took a back seat to his religious and charitable endeavours, particularly after he sold his mutual fund empire for $913 million to Franklin Resources Inc of San Mateo, California, a month before his 80th birthday in 1992.

He graduated first in his class at Yale University, all while paying his own tuition during the Depression by earning scholarships, doing administrative work for the university and beating his classmates in poker, according to a 1999 profile in Wired magazine.

He earned a law degree at Oxford University in the UK, having been named a Rhodes Scholar. Though the law school there was known for its socialist leanings at the time, Templeton remained uncritical of capitalism as a student.

At 24, he set off on a seven-month tour of 35 countries with fellow Oxford Christian James Inksetter. They slept on ship decks and ate vegetables, fruit and day-old bread to conserve their money.

“This education in thrift prepared me for a career of selling advice to wealthy families by searching for stocks whose basic value seemed to be many times greater than the market price,” he said in 2004.

Before he left for his travels he had written to 100 investment firms, letting them know he’d be available for hire when he got back.

When he returned, there was a job waiting for him at the Wall Street firm Fenner and Beane.

When World War II began in 1939, Templeton borrowed money to buy 100 shares in each of the 104 companies selling for $1 a share or less, including 34 that were in bankruptcy, according to a biography on his foundation’s Web site.

Only four turned out to be worthless after Templeton held each for an average of four years.

Later, the Templeton Growth Fund was designed to invest in companies worldwide with the prospect of returns based on future earnings growth, a so-called bottom-up, value-investing style.

“We must remain patient, flexible in our outlook, and always aware that eventually all securities and assets will be priced according to their future earnings,” Templeton wrote in the foreword to the 2002 book Engines That Move Markets by Scottish money manager Alasdair Nairn.

Templeton attributed much of his success to his ability to maintain an elevated mood, avoid anxiety and stay disciplined.

Uninterested in consumerism, he drove his own car, never flew first class and lived year-round in his peaceful ocean-side home in the Bahamas.

In 1998, he estimated that, apart from spiritual programs, he had watched fewer than 84 hours of television in his life, according to an article in Investor’s Business Daily.
By the time he sold the business to Franklin, it managed about $20 billion for clients and had money managers such as Mark Mobius, a prominent emerging-markets investor.
He wrote, edited or contributed to at least 10 books from The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God in 1982 to Faithful Finances 101: From the Poverty of Fear and Greed to the Riches of Spiritual Investing in 2005.

Templeton is survived by two sons, a stepdaughter, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. One son, John Jr, retired as a pediatric surgeon in 1995 to become president of the foundation.