“Remaining open to the variety of life’s riches brings opportunities for personal and spiritual growth.”
John Marks Templeton
John Marks Templeton was born November 29, 1912, in the small town of Winchester, Tennessee. An exceptional student, John graduated first in his high school class and attended Yale University. Unfortunately, the Depression took its toll on the family’s finances, so the young man tapped into his innate entrepreneurial spirit and determination to pay for tuition, board, and books to complete his college education. His work ethic and focus paid off. Templeton graduated first in his college class. He was named a Rhodes Scholar to Balliol College at Oxford from which he graduated with a M.A. degree in law.
After beginning his career on Wall Street in 1937, Templeton bought a small investment advisory concern in 1940 that became Templeton, Dobbrow and Vance, Inc. He entered the mutual fund industry in 1954 when he established the Templeton Growth Fund.
In 1956 Templeton joined with marketing consultant William Damroth to launch the Nucleonics, Chemistry, and Electronics Fund, a specialty fund that reflected Templeton’s lifelong interest in science and technology. With investor interest in specialty funds rising in the late 1950s, Templeton Damroth’s new fund grew dramatically.
Templeton sold his stake in Templeton Damroth in 1962, and over the next three decades created some of the world’s largest and most successful international investment funds. Each $10,000 invested in the Templeton Growth Fund Class A in 1954, with dividends reinvested, would have grown to $2 million by 1992 when Sir John sold the Templeton Growth Fund. This translates into an annualized return of 14.5% since inception.
Called by Money magazine “arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century” (January 1999), he sold the Templeton Funds in 1992 to the Franklin Group for $440 million.
In addition to his career as an investor, Templeton also established the world’s largest annual award given to an individual, The Templeton Prize, and, in 1987, founded the John Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic foundation based in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. The Foundation’s mission is to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for research on what scientists and philosophers call the “Big Questions.” This vision is derived from Templeton’s belief that rigorous research and cutting-edge science are at the heart of human progress.
A naturalized British citizen who lived in Nassau, the Bahamas, Templeton was knighted as a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II in 1987 for his many philanthropic accomplishments, including his endowment of the former Oxford Centre for Management Studies as a full college, Templeton College, at the University of Oxford in 1983.
John Marks Templeton passed away on July 8, 2008, at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas.
For more information about the life of John Marks Templeton, visit http://www.sirjohntempleton.org
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[...] Say? was created to function as a web resource to serve as a hub for sharing financial wisdom from John Marks Templeton (1912-2008), Money magazine’s 1999 as the “twentieth century’s greatest stock picker.” In [...]