Market Premium

Stockholders are willing to pay for Franklin's breadth. The firm's premium to assets under management, used to calculate the market value for fund companies relative to their managed assets, rose to 3.1 percent as of March 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The ratio was 1.2 percent for BlackRock, which became the world's biggest money manager with the $15.2 billion acquisition of Barclays Global Investors in December 2009. Baltimore-based Legg Mason had a ratio of 0.7 percent. The number is calculated by subtracting tangible common equity from the company's market value and dividing by assets under management.

Franklin sticks to a long-term outlook and favors countries with low debt.

World bonds accounted for 43 percent of long-term sales and $56.5 billion in net new deposits in 2010. Many of its funds, including those run by Hasenstab and Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton's emerging-markets group, have invested heavily in Asia.

"If we get into an environment where there's massive credit risk, either rates rising or if they get some of their investments wrong, we could see some outflows," Casteleyn said. "The hypergrowth will come out."

Family Stakes

Johnson, 50, is the grandson of Rupert H. Johnson, who founded the firm in New York in 1947, a year after Edward C. Johnson Jr. started Fidelity Investments in Boston. The two aren't related. Rupert's son Charles B. Johnson, 78, took over as CEO in 1957 and is now chairman. Charles's brother, Rupert Johnson Jr., 70, joined in 1965 and is vice chairman.

The three Johnsons, Gregory Johnson's sister Jennifer M. Johnson, who is the chief operating officer, and Peter M. Sacerdote, a brother-in-law of Charles Johnson and Rupert Johnson Jr., own about 34 percent of the company's stock worth $9.46 billion, Bloomberg data show. The shares have soared more than 4,000 times in value since Franklin's initial public offering in 1971, based on the split-adjusted price.

The Johnsons don't take large salaries by industry standards, said Geoff Bobroff, a fund consultant in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, in a telephone interview.