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Today is a big day for Franklin Templeton. It feels like I've stumbled in on a birthday party and from the looks of it the asset management giant is celebrating in style. The anniversary is a notable one. Celebrating 60 years of global operations in asset management, sharp-suited, smart-talking executive managing director Jed A. Plafker and senior director of CEMEA Harshendu Bindal, are in the region to do big business.

Franklin Templeton has been in the region for a while. It has recently hit the headlines by acquiring a 25% stake in Dubai's asset management firm Algebra Capital. Its regional activities, however, started long before inking the deal. "One of the things that we like to do is go into a market early and build as the market builds. We often meet with regulators while the reforms are taking place to give our experiences in other places in the world," says Plafker, and Franklin has been doing just that.

The company was one of the first asset management firms to be licensed in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) back in 2004, when the infrastructure was still being set up. Until last week, however, Franklin had been operating from temporary offices in Abu Dhabi and has just celebrated the formal inauguration of its offices in the DIFC.

Local consumer banks, foreign consumer and private banks, and independent financial advisors are all groups the company's asset management products cater to. In order to do that, Franklin has put together an analyst team in Dubai that also invests in the region's stock markets for the company's emerging market funds.

The business has also located a number of its legal and compliant staff in the emirate, where they work with the regulator on consultation papers and providing expertise. "Dubai has become quite something for us; it's been amazing over the last seven years to see the growth, not only in our business, but the market," says Plafker adding: "I think the framework that has been set up here has really benefited the whole financial industry in the region."

In terms of emerging market groups, Franklin likes to think of itself as having the largest exposures to this part of the world and that, from an emerging markets perspective, it has a substantial amount of investments. It also believes its analyst base in the region is set to grow as business prospers. Currently, its business in the area is spread between the GCC and the Eastern Med as business in Greece, Turkey and the surrounding countries witness terrific growth.

And while Franklin's investments in the MENA region exceed US$5bn, the figure is greatly overshadowed by its global achievements. After 60 years in the business, the company has accumulated over US$600bn in assets under management. To further explain the scale of the company's global growth, approximately a year ago Franklin had US$490bn in assets under management, a figure that increased over US$100bn only in the last 12 months. Plafker attributes this tremendous growth to two main reasons.

From an asset management standpoint, Franklin has made a point of having various investment managers and styles. When the company first started, managers were mainly based on fixed income. Over the years, however, this has changed as managers implemented different strategies but also looked abroad and acquired what they thought was the best international manager, the best value manager, or the best high net worth manager. By doing so, the have put together various investment management organisations under one umbrella and diversified the business through investment management objectives.

"The second is we've diversified our business geographically. I think we are considered quite a pioneer being a US firm that has looked outside the US," he says. Franklin is now present in over 30 countries around the world with offices in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. Globally, the company's operations are divided into two groups of funds. The first involves global products, equity, and fixed-income while the other consists of local asset management companies. "For example, in Korea, Brazil, Japan, India, Canada, we have local asset management companies where we have analysts, portfolio managers, stocks and bonds in the local markets for the local people. We are one of the largest foreign asset managers in each of those locations," says Plafker, stressing the importance of such a position.

"I think that's when you become part of the market; when you are offering products in the local currency for the local people invested in the local companies," he adds. In support of this point, Bindal calls this process a "state of evolution". He explains that when a foreign player comes into a retail market, it ideally starts off by offering the products it has the most expertise in.

"Typically all our international funds are where our strengths lie, and so we start by offering those products," he says adding, however, that this could soon change as companies spend more time in that new region and start building domestic asset management capabilities and consequently start to investigate ways to offer new products that cater to the region.

Franklin has identified that emerging trends in different regions are very important factors to determine new products and services offered by any company. The two senior executives have noticed more than a few trends in the industry both locally and internationally.

"In the past, business in the Gulf was primarily driven by very high net worth individuals and we were dealing with ultra-high net worth or with expatriate audiences. You were not dealing so much with the local average white collar worker. That trend, although slowly, is beginning to change.

"In the Eastern Med business is very different. It's your average upper middle class white collar worker who's a consumer for these products. For us mixing the Gulf and Eastern Med business and managing that as one unit is great because that way we have a good retail business as well as a good institutional and high net worth business together."

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