Overview
Franklin Resources Inc., known as Franklin Templeton Investments, is a global investment management company. Its fund brands include Franklin, Templeton, Mutual Series, and others. It provides investment management and other related services to open-end and closed-end investment companies and funds, unregistered funds, and other private, institutional, high-net-worth and separately managed accounts. Its bank subsidiaries also offer retail banking, private banking and consumer-lending services.
The company's reputation is one of a well-run, conservative shop, known for its bond and value-oriented stock funds. Once regarded mainly as a dominant player in bond funds, the company went on a buying spree in the 1990s to diversify and picked up the funds of the late investing superstar Sir John Templeton and famed stock picker Michael Price (of the Mutual Series). The Mutual Series has maintained its reputation for shareholder activism. Templeton's emerging-markets guru Mark Mobius still manages the firm's emerging-markets portfolios.
About a third of the company is owned by the family of its late founder, Rupert Johnson, Sr., and its leadership is largely a family affair. The founder's son, Charles ("Charlie") B. Johnson, who grew the company into a major money-management firm, is still chairman. Gregory E. Johnson, Charlie's son, is CEO. The company is based in San Mateo, Calif., and has offices around the world.