Franklin Templeton, whose contrarian bets made profits in Ireland and face losses in war-torn Ukraine, has been buying debt in Malaysia as global funds flee.
The San Mateo, California-based money manager which oversees about $855 billion, has over the past two years become the largest holder of Malaysian government local-currency bonds due in the next 30 months among funds that make their quarterly filings public, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Various of its funds added an aggregate 9.64 billion ringgit ($2.3 billion) this year to holdings maturing from September 2015 to February 2018, bringing the firm’s total claim to 23.1 billion ringgit, the data show.
