Templeton Dragon Fund, Staying Closed-End (BEN, TDF)

There was some interesting news over at Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE:BEN) today.  The company manages the Templeton Dragon Fund, Inc. (NYSE:TDF), a closed-end mutual fund run by legendary emerging market investment manager Mark Mobius which invests at least 45% of its total assets in Chinese equities.

The fund announced today that the votes at the Fund’s Annual Meeting of Shareholders held on May 30, 2008 have been tallied.  Shareholders approves the election of directors, but the voted down a shareholder proposal to consider approving and submitting for shareholder approval at a future shareholder meeting a proposal to convert the closed-end status of the fund to an open-end fund.

The Fund currently has total assets in excess of $1.2 billion, and while that is big in size it is small compared to Franklin Templeton’s $617+ Billion in assets under management as of April 30, 2008.  It won’t have any impact at all on franklin Resources, but this will at least in theory keep one more fund from raising several billion that could have run up more Chinese shares.  It also allows the fund managers to work within size constraints without having to make investment decisions based largely upon inflows and redemptions.

Jon C. Ogg
June 2, 2008