Mark Mobius
The Pioneer
The frontier and an appetite for the unknown, goes first.
Mark Mobius embodies The Pioneer because he spent decades literally mapping uncharted investment territory, entering markets when socialism and communism shut most doors and expanding from six countries to seventy through sheer conviction and physical presence. His insistence on on-the-ground research and human judgment over pure balance-sheet analysis reflects a frontier intelligence, the kind that does not merely find opportunity in a category but builds the emerging-markets asset class itself.
“We started with only six countries. Most countries did not welcome fund investment. They were either socialist or communist. Then we started expanding gradually — eventually investing in something like seventy different countries.”
“There's nothing like being in a country, smelling the smells, looking at the people. You walk into a company, look around, observe the morale of the staff. Nothing beats being on the ground.”
“It's not all in the numbers. When we started we looked at the balance sheet and thought that was the most important thing. It's not — it's the people running the company. People create wealth.”
Masters in Business: “Mark Mobius on Emerging Market Funds”
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