George Soros

George Soros

George Soros is a business mogul, investor and humanitarian known for being ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank of England’. He chairs the Soros Fund Management and is an avid supporter of the progressive-liberal causes. Soros also played an important role in the passive shift of Hungary from communism to capitalism.

Soros was born on 12th August 1930 in Budapest, Hungary later moved to England in 1947. His uncle paid for all his expenditures while he studied at the London School of Economics. In 1952, he graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Science. He got a job at F.M Mayer after he moved to New York in 1956. Soros worked there as an arbitrage trader till 1959 after which he switched his job to work for Wertheim & Co. as an analyst till 1963. During this time he also came with the theory of reflexivity. After this he got an offer from Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder where he remained at the post of vice-president till 1973.

Soros bought a 4% share in the Bombay Stock Exchange for $35 million. Although George Soros is known for his shrewd business mindedness, he is also a provocative personality. It is said that he rehabilitated the U.S war on drugs and he also benefited heavily from the currency crisis of the United Kingdom of 1992 which is known as Black Wednesday. It was 16th September 1992 when Soros fund sold short over 10 billion Pounds. This earned him approximately $1.1 billion. In 2005, Soros wanted to purchase the Washington Nationals which is a Major League baseball team. In 2008 it was heard that he wanted to buy an Italian association football team AS Roma but no deal was made. He did however buy a 1.9% of Class A shares in the English football club ‘Manchester United’.

Amongst all the controversies, Soros is also a philanthropist. His philanthropic efforts started in 1979 when he founded the Soros Foundation. This foundation basically sponsored global initiatives. He generously donated to black students enabling them to study at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He made efforts to encourage non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states mainly through the Soros Foundation and the ‘OSI’ which is the Open Society Institute. According to a report by the PSI it has spent more than $500 million in the past few years. Soros promised to give the ‘Millennium Promise’ $50 million. He has donated approximately 7 billion dollars since 1979. He has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees by many notable schools which include ‘New School for Social Research’, the University of Oxford, Yale University and the Corvinus University of Budapest.

According to Forbes, Soros was the 22nd wealthiest person of the world in 2012. He is the wealthiest hedge-fund manager and also ranks on number 7 on the 400 wealthiest Americans list. Soros has also written several books including ‘The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means’, ‘The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered’ and the ‘The Alchemy of Finance’.