Sir John Templeton – philanthropist, Templeton Foundation (95)

Sir John Marks Templeton (29 November 1912 – 8 July 2008) was an American-born British stock investor, businessman and philanthropist.

In 2007, Templeton was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People (Time 100) under the category of "Power Givers."

Death of John Templeton
On 8 July 2008, John Templeton died at Doctors Hospital in Nassau, Bahamas of pneumonia at 12.20 local time. John Templeton was 95 years old at the time of his death.

Templeton became a billionaire by pioneering the use of globally diversified mutual funds. His Templeton Growth, Ltd. (investment fund), established in 1954, was among the first who invested in Japan in the middle of the 1960s. In 2006 he was listed in a 7-way tie for 129th place on the Sunday Times Rich List. He rejected technical analysis for stock trading, preferring instead to use fundamental analysis. Money magazine in 1999 called him "arguably the greatest global stock picker of the century”. He renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1968, thus avoiding U.S. income taxes. He had dual naturalized Bahamian and British citizenship and lived in the Bahamas.

As a philanthropist, Templeton established

• the John Templeton Foundation
• the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities in 1972.
• the Templeton Library in Sewanee, Tennessee.