Mark Mobius, former lead manager of Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust (TEM), is relinquishing management of a number of other funds he runs, but this should not make a big difference to investors. And Mr Mobius is still executive chairman and key spokesperson for Templeton Emerging Markets Group.
Mr Mobius' name will be removed from 12 funds by the end of May 2017, including Templeton Asian Growth (LU0768360355) and Templeton Emerging Markets (LU0195951610). But he had in effect already handed over responsibility for these funds.
"The reality is that Mobius has not been involved in the day-to-day management of these strategies for quite some time," said Germaine Share, analyst at Morningstar. "In most cases, the newly named portfolio managers have in fact been doing the heavy-lifting for their respective strategies for a long time."
For example, Allan Lam has been the final decision maker on Templeton Asian Growth since 1999, despite not being named as lead manager until recently.
And the transition has already taken place at the Mobius-run fund probably best known to UK private investors: Mr Mobius handed over management of Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust to Carlos Hardenberg in October 2015.
Since then this investment trust, which we added to our IC Top 100 Funds last year, has experienced a dramatic improvement in performance. Over one year it has made a net asset value return of 52 per cent, in contrast to 37 per cent for MSCI Emerging Markets index, whereas over three and five years it underperforms this index.
The improved performance has been helped by a number of changes Mr Hardenberg has made to the trust's portfolio, such as introducing a focus on technology companies.
