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George Soros(Hungarian Soros György - György Shorosh, English George Soros, real name- Schwartz - American trader, financier, philanthropist, investor, philosopher. A supporter of the theory of an open society and an opponent of "market fundamentalism". The successor of the ideas of Karl Popper. Congenital Esperanto. Creator of a network of charitable organizations known as the Soros Foundation. Member of the Executive Committee of the International Crisis Group. For 2016, his fortune is estimated at 24.9 billion US dollars.

Place of Birth. Education. Born August 12, 1930 in Budapest, Hungary. Born into a Jewish family of average income. His father Tivadar Schwartz is a lawyer, an outstanding figure in the city's Jewish community, an Esperanto specialist and an Esperanto writer. In 1936, the family changed their surname to the Hungarian version of Shorosh (Soros).

In 1947, Soros moved to England, where he entered the London School of Economics and Political Science and successfully graduated three years later. He was lectured by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, who influenced him big influence, whose ideological follower he became. At the same time, he worked as an assistant manager at a haberdashery factory.

Career. In 1953-1956 - work in the company Singer and Friedlander (Singer & Friedlander) in London.

In 1956 - moving to New York, USA.

From 1956-1963 he was a broker and financial analyst at Wetheim & Co. Worked in international arbitration. founded new method trade - internal arbitration.

In 1963-1966 - work on a philosophical dissertation "The Heavy Burden of Consciousness".

In 1967, with the capital of the Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder company of $ 100 thousand, he created an investment fund with a capital of $ 4 million.

In 1969 - the head and co-owner of the Double Eagle Foundation (Double Eagle).

In 1970 - created an investment company, which later became the famous Quantum (Quantum Group).

In 1979 - created the first charitable foundation in the USA " open society".

In 1984, he opened a charitable foundation in Hungary.

In 1988, he organized a fund in the USSR "Cultural Initiative in Support of Science, Culture and Education". However, the fund was soon closed because the money was not used for its intended purpose.

In 1990 he founded the Central European University in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw.

September 16, 1992 - made a billion dollars on the fall of the pound sterling, which is why he received the nickname "the man who ruined the Bank of England."

In 1995, the capital of the Quantum group of funds was estimated at more than $ 10 billion, and Soros's personal income was about a third of this amount.

In 1997, during the economic crisis of a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused George Soros of attacking the currencies of Asian countries. Soros dismissed the accusations and shifted responsibility to state financial structures Asian countries where loans grew too fast.

In 2000, the fall of the NASDAQ index caused damage to Soros in the amount of almost $ 3 billion. After that, Quantum was reorganized and a transition to a lower risk strategy was proclaimed.

In 2002, a Parisian court found Soros guilty of making a profit due to knowledge of confidential information (insider). According to the court, thanks to this information, the millionaire earned about $ 2 million on the shares of the French bank Société Générale. Sentenced to a fine of 2.2 million euros.

In 2006 - ranked 27th in the list of the richest people in the United States. His income according to Forbes magazine is estimated at $ 8.7 billion.

He is an honorary doctor new school Social Research (New York), Oxford and Yale Universities.

Financier. In 1956 he moved to the USA, created an international investment fund, which began to bring him profit. Today he heads the foundation that bears his name.

Philanthropist. The first foundation - the Open Society Foundation - Soros founded in New York in 1979, the first East European Foundation - in Hungary in 1984. Today it funds a network of foundations operating in 31 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as in South Africa, Haiti and USA. The activities of the foundations are aimed at developing and supporting the infrastructure of an open society. In Ukraine, the Soros International Renaissance Foundation was created.

Today, the network of Soros foundations covers more than 100 countries in Eastern Europe, former USSR, Africa, Latin America and USA. These funds are aimed at creating and supporting the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. In 1992 he founded the Central University with a campus in Budapest. Every year, the Soros Foundations network spends approximately $400 million to support projects in the field of education, health, development civil society and etc.

Soros and Ukraine. On June 17, 2014, the President of Ukraine met with Soros, who, through his Renaissance Foundation, initiated the creation of a strategic group of advisers to assist the Ukrainian authorities in implementing reforms and informed the head of state about the preparation of a strategic reform plan for Ukraine.

Strongly supports EU and US support for Ukraine.

In 2015, Soros spent six days in Ukraine and, in a conversation with reporters, said that he had not been in any country in which his foundation operates for so long. In addition, he said that he intended to encourage Ukrainian migrants to do business.

May 14, 1995 elected Foreign Member National Academy Sciences of Ukraine, specializing in economics, finance.

On November 12, 2015, he was awarded the Order of Freedom - for significant personal merits in strengthening the international authority of the Ukrainian state, a significant contribution to the implementation of socio-economic reforms, and many years of fruitful charitable work.

Books. Author of numerous articles and books: The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (PublicAffairs, July 2006), The American Advantage Bible, George Soros on Globalization (2002). ), "Alchemy of Finance" (1987), "Discovering Soviet system"(1990), "Ensuring Democracy" (1991), "Soros on Soros": A Vision for Development Processes "(1995), "Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society in Danger" (1998), "Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism" ( 2000). In 2011, a collection of his lectures "Lectures at the Central European University" (K.: Spirit and Letter, 2011) was published in Ukrainian. His articles and essays on politics, society and economics are featured regularly in leading newspapers and magazines around the world.

Family. Divorced twice. Soros has three children from his first marriage and two from his second: Robert, Andrea, Jonathan (by his first wife Analyna Vitchak), Alexander and Gregory (by his second wife Susan Weber Soros).

George Soros (Schwartz) is a famous American trader, investor, financier and philanthropist. Founder of the network of charitable organizations "Soros Foundation". In 2016, Soros' fortune was $24.9 billion. Many consider him a speculator and a man who ruined the Bank of England.

George Soros is an ambiguous personality: for some, he is a financial guru, founder of charitable foundations in 25 countries, an influential investor and a loving father of five children, for others - "great and terrible." He is called a master of market speculation, a stock speculator who "collapsed" English bank. He is a supporter of the legalization of marijuana, etc.

Principles of George Soros

George Soros was born in 1930 in Budapest, in a Jewish family with an average income. His father, Tivadar Schwartz, was a lawyer and one of the main figures in the Jewish community. In 1936, for security reasons, he forged documents: he changed his surname to Hungarian - Shorosh. This is how Gyorgy Shorosh, the future George Soros, appeared.

They say, "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." These words can be attributed to George Soros. Life gave him good lessons, thanks to which he became the way we see him now. One of them: “The lesson that I learned during the war is that sometimes you can even lose own life if you don't take risks.

Thanks to the difficulties that befell the family, he formed the main life principles:

  • “My principle is to strive first to survive, and only then to earn.”
  • “I did not accept the rules proposed by others. If I did that, I wouldn't be alive."

In London

In 1947, the family moved to. Subsequently, Soros would write: "I was lucky that my father was one of those who did not act as people usually do."

In the UK, Soros goes to study at the London School of Economics and Political Science, whose motto is "Know the reason for things." Many influential people in society graduated from this school, including John F. Kennedy.

At the London School, John Soros met the Austrian lecturer Karl Popper, a sociologist and philosopher whose idea of ​​an open society influenced the entire world. later life Soros. The essence of this idea is that people in an open society, when making decisions, should rely on their own intelligence and critical thinking, and not on the system of prohibitions that is characteristic of a closed society. That is, a person should think with his own head, and not be a cog in society.

Three years later, Soros successfully graduated from high school. It would seem that after graduating from such a prestigious educational institution, a direct road to big business. But he works first at a haberdashery factory as an assistant manager, then as a traveling salesman travels to English seaside resorts. In 1953, he got a job in the arbitration department of London companies, but he quickly got bored with routine work.

Once he had to earn extra money as a porter at the station, and as a waiter, and even as an apple picker, so it cannot be said that he shied away from work. But it would be strange to think that a person who has high intelligence, knowledge, prestigious education and ambitions, will be satisfied with the position of a traveling salesman. He is attracted to the financial sector, but when he tries to get a job in a bank, he is rejected everywhere. And one of the main reasons is his nationality.

Start of financial activity

A friend of Soros's father, who owns a small brokerage firm, invites him to his place, and in 1956 George Soros crosses Atlantic Ocean and ends up in New York. From this time it begins financial activities. In a brokerage house, he learns the secrets of buying and selling securities. On the so-called external arbitrage - buying shares in one country and selling them in another - he manages to make good money. In addition, George is enterprising and comes up with his own way of trading securities, which he calls internal arbitrage: he sells the combined securities separately before they can be officially separated from each other.

And here he follows another of his life principles: "I do not play within this set of rules, I seek to change the rules of the game."

However, changes in legislation, in particular the fees introduced by the government, made this business unprofitable, and Soros left for three years, from 1963 to 1966, to write a dissertation and a philosophical treatise, The Heavy Burden of Consciousness. Over time, he realizes that business attracts him more than philosophy.

Creation of the Quantum Fund

Since 1966, the investment activity of George Soros begins. The capital of the company he founded is initially $100,000. For three years of work, he makes a significant profit and becomes a co-owner and head of the Double Eagle fund, which later grew into (received such a name in honor of the creator of quantum mechanics).

Quantum is a hedge fund, that is, a non-public private investment fund managed by a professional investment manager. Due to the lack of a clear regulation hedge funds are free to use various financial instruments and choose strategies when investing money in any markets. The result of the work of such funds can be not only profits, but also losses - so Quantum had to go through not only ups, but also downs.

Nevertheless, Quantum provided its investors with more than 30% of annual returns on shares, and in total they received $ 32 billion - this is the largest profit in the history of hedge funds. By 1990, Quantum's capital was already $10 billion.

"White Wednesday"

However, Soros became famous in the world not at all for this, but because in one day he earned $ 1 billion by playing on the fall of the British pound against the German mark. The day of September 16, 1992, which became "black Wednesday" for British banks, became for Soros, in his words, "white Wednesday". He himself gained a reputation as the man who broke the Bank of England.

He did this using the Global Macro strategy: the fund manager, based on an assessment of the macroeconomic position occupied by different regions and countries in these regions, concludes which asset classes will go down and which will go up.

For several years, Soros bought the British currency in small batches. In addition, he turned with his idea for financial support to the largest American investment banks. Having the appropriate capital, Soros began to play for the fall of the British pound - to short. The sale of 5 billion British pounds at once allowed the pound to depreciate to a critical minimum, and the repurchase of the pounds that had fallen in price made it possible to make a profit of 1 billion.

failures

Of course, playing on the stock exchange is associated with risks and failures. They did not bypass Soros either. He called the purchase in 1997 of a controlling stake in the Russian telecommunications company Svyazinvest, in which he lost almost $ 2 billion, as his worst investment and the main mistake of his life: due to the crisis that happened in 1998, the share price fell by more than half , and he was able to sell them only after numerous attempts in 2004 for $625 million.

In the future, he had other failures, albeit on a smaller scale, so he decided to finance scientific and cultural projects.

Charity

George Soros invests a lot of money in charity. He founded several charitable foundations with branches in other countries: in Africa, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and the United States of America. These are the Open Society Institute, the Stefan Batory Foundation, the Soros Foundation, which support the creative intelligentsia, help scientists and the opposition in countries where there is no democratic regime. In total, over the past 30 years, Soros has spent over $5 billion on charity. It is said that he spends about $300 million a year on non-profit projects. And in 2010, he donated $332 million to his open society charitable foundation, earning him the title of America's Most Generous Billionaire.

Soros Profit Strategy

It is known that Soros managed to earn a significant profit using the so-called "bearish" tactics (playing for a fall).

He adhered to the theory of reflexivity stock markets, according to which decisions on the purchase and sale of securities are made on the basis of prices expected in the future. And expectation is a psychological category. Since the stock exchange is also people (investors, traders, etc.), they can be influenced by information through financial and analytical publications, the media, and currency speculators. "Spells can influence people's decisions, which shape the course of events," he says.

It is believed that George Soros may owe his success in making a profit both to his own gift of financial foresight and to the skillful use of insider information, which was provided to him by people who have weight in the economic and political spheres of the world's leading countries.

For example, in 2002, a Parisian court found him guilty of using confidential information to generate profits, through which he earned $ 2 million from the shares of a large French bank, and sentenced him to a corresponding fine.

Soros shares his thoughts and ideas in articles and books. Entrepreneurs and financiers will be interested in such as "Alchemy of Finance", "Soros on Soros. Ahead of Change”, “A New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The 2008 Credit Crisis and Its Significance”. In addition, George Soros is an honorary doctorate from the New York New School for Social Research, Oxford and Yale.

On his initiative, in 1990, the Central European University was opened in Prague, Budapest and Warsaw.

Currently, George Soros lives in the penthouse of one of the skyscrapers in New York. He is undemanding in everyday life and at the same time says: "I have always felt like an exceptional person."

A look that is scary to meet, full of despair and pain.

The look of a man going to his death, who has not a drop of hope for salvation. The look of a man following in a column of doomed Jews on the road from life to non-existence... The Holocaust claimed the lives of millions of people, and the list of victims could be replenished with one more name - the name of Gyord Schwartz.

Now this person is not called anything other than George Soros, but from childhood he learned the main lesson, thanks to which he did not share the fate of those who suffered from Nazi repression:

“I did not accept the rules proposed by others. If I did that, I wouldn't be alive."

Our today's hero was born in Budapest, in 1930. And if he owes his birth to both parents, then he must thank his father for his second birth. He forged documents and took the family to the UK when the threat from the Nazis, solving the "Jewish question", hung over them.

“I was lucky that my father was one of those who did not act, as people usually do,” convinced Soros, who escaped an unknown death during the genocide.


Well, the ability to make risky decisions helped George Soros to reach certain heights, he has all the signs of a successful person. Judge for yourself - our hero takes 7 position in the list of American billionaires, his fortune is estimated by Forbes magazine at $ 20 billion as of March 2012.

Mr. Soros is a powerful investor, financial guru, founder of philanthropic foundations in 25 countries, and father of five children.

George Soros is also the man "who crashed the Bank of England", a supporter of marijuana legalization, a master market speculator, and a sponsor of various opposition groups in various countries peace.

You have already understood, before us is a very multifaceted personality. George Soros can be admired or hated, praised or scolded. I prefer another option - to study. To learn both from the good and strong qualities of his personality, and from his mistakes, because it is better to learn from the mistakes of others than your own, right?

Soros himself does not claim to be perfect person, and appreciates the ability to admit one's wrong:


In 2012, Soros will turn 82 years old, and now we will talk about what he did to deserve all the flattering and not so good reviews about himself.

After emigrating to the UK in 1947, Soros entered the London School of Economics and Political Science. The educational institution was famous for its influential graduates, including John F. Kennedy himself. The motto of the school - "know the reason for things" - was also obeyed by George Soros, and now his philosophy of life "is not based on money, but on my idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe complex relationship between reality and ideas about it."

During his studies, Soros met Karl Popper, an outstanding philosopher and sociologist. The Austrian lecturer became a mentor to George Soros, infecting him with his "open society" concept. According to Mr. Popper, members of an open society make decisions based on critical thinking and their own intelligence, while in a closed society relations between people are regulated by a system of taboos.

Well, to think with your own head, not agreeing to play the role of a cog in society, is the lot successful people. Mr. Soros is convinced that if you channel intelligence into business, which is “not at all that complicated,” then « smart people can get real wealth when they really dedicate themselves to it».

After successfully completing his education, Soros gets a job as an assistant manager at a haberdashery factory. At one time he worked as a traveling salesman, driving around the seaside resorts of England in an old Ford. If Soros had a work book, one could read such records as “a waiter in a restaurant”, “a porter at a railway station”, “an apple picker”.

Did such positions suit an ambitious young man?

Not at all. It’s just that in the 50s of the last century, Soros was faced with what he had to face and modern man when receiving on - with discrimination. George persistently offers his candidacy in the banking sector, but everywhere he hears a refusal due to nationality and lack of patrons.

But that doesn't stop Soros. If a person puts himself in front of him and stubbornly goes to it, sooner or later, he reaches it. In 1953, George gets a job in the London company Singer & Friedlander. Soros works in the arbitration department, but when work has become a boring routine, Soros is looking for new options.

In 1956, at the invitation of his friend's father (oh, acquaintances, nevertheless, do not interfere) he moved to America. In a brokerage firm on Wall Street, Soros comprehends all the intricacies of buying and selling. Buying in one country and selling them in another, or, using the terminology, "external arbitrage", brought our hero a good income. Enterprising George even comes up with his own method of trading - he sells the combined securities separately before they can be officially separated from each other. This method earnings Soros dubbed "internal arbitrage".


On this occasion, the comedy "Men in Black" is recalled, when the main character of Will Smith creaks to move the table towards him, so that it would be more convenient to fill out the questionnaire. Yes, people who change the rules of the game are able not only to move the tables, but also to move the economy of countries, as our hero will soon convince you of.

In 1963, when domestic arbitration stopped making money due to government-imposed fees, Soros returned to work on the dissertation he had begun earlier. In 1966, without finishing scientific work on the topic "The heavy burden of consciousness", our philosopher returns to . It is in this field that Mr. Soros proves that consciousness is a quite feasible burden that brings good income.

In 1970, Soros, together with Jim Rogers, founded the famous Quantum hedge fund, which became one of the main sources of his income. With respect to readers who are not familiar with the term "", I will give a little background. Hedge funds are private investment funds that are not available to the general public and are managed by a professional investment manager.

George Soros was not the only "culprit" of the pound sterling, but it was he who received the title of "the man who broke the Bank of England." Since then, this environment has become monochrome - it went down in history as "black", and Soros himself calls it "white".

George Soros (Soros) real name (Gyorgy Shorosh) was born in Budapest on August 12, 1930 in a Jewish family of average means. George's father was a lawyer and publisher (tried to publish a magazine in Esperanto). In 1914, he volunteered for the front, was captured by the Russians and was exiled to Siberia, from where he fled back to his native Budapest. During the time of repression, thanks to false documents made by his father, the Soros family escaped persecution by the Nazis and in 1947 emigrated safely to the UK. At this time, Soros was already 17 years old. Here Soros entered the London School of Economics and successfully graduated three years later. He was lectured by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, who later became his mentor. George's life goal was Karl Popper's idea of ​​creating a so-called open society on earth. In this regard, he organized numerous charity organisations all over the world.

In England, George Soros found work in a haberdashery factory. The position was called assistant manager, but in fact he worked as a salesman. Then George turned into a traveling salesman, driving around in a cheap Ford and selling goods to various merchants on seaside resorts Wales. Simultaneously with the work of a traveling salesman, Soros tried to get a job in all the merchant banks in London. But everywhere he was refused due to his nationality and the lack of a protégé. Only in 1953 did he get a job in the company "Singer and Friedlander", from his compatriot Hungarian. Work and at the same time an internship took place in the arbitration department, which was located next to the stock exchange. Its leader traded shares of gold mining companies. But boring work did not inspire George Soros, and three years later he found a way to move to America.



He arrived in the USA in 1956 at the invitation of the father of his London friend, a certain Mayer, who had his own small brokerage firm on Wall Street. A career in the United States began with international arbitration, that is, buying securities in one country and selling them in another. After the Suet crisis, this type of business did not go as well as Soros wanted and he created a new method of trading, calling it internal arbitrage (selling separately combined securities of stocks, bonds and warrants before they could be officially separated from each other). Prior to Kennedy's imposition of a surcharge on foreign investment this type of activity brought a good income. After that, Soros' business was destroyed overnight and he returned to philosophy. From 1963 to 1966, he tried to rewrite the dissertation on which he began working after business school and returned to writing his treatise "The Heavy Burden of Consciousness", but the demanding George Soros was not satisfied with his brainchild, as he believed that he was simply conveying the thoughts of his great teacher.


At this, the career of the philosopher was terminated and in 1966 he returned to business. From the company's capital of 100 thousand dollars, Soros created an investment fund with a capital of 4 million dollars. Having received significant profits in three years of work, in 1969 Soros became the head and co-owner of a fund called Double Eagle and later developed into the famous Quantum Group. The fund carried out speculative transactions with securities that brought him millions of dollars in profit. By mid-1990, Quantum's capital was $10 billion. To date, every dollar invested in this fund has turned into 5.5 thousand US dollars. A significant day on September 15, 1992, when, thanks to the operations undertaken by Soros associated with a sharp fall in the British pound, his fortune increased by another 1 billion dollars. After that day, Soros became known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England." The Open Society Fund was the start of Soros' philanthropic career. Now he has established charitable foundations in more than 25 countries. Back in 1988, Soros organized the Cultural Initiative Foundation in the USSR to support science, culture, and education. But the "Cultural Initiative" fund was closed, as the money was not used for its intended purpose, but was used for personal purposes. certain persons. In 1995, the decision was made to start over in Russia, and a new Open Society Foundation was organized. George Soros is the first in Russia since 1996. finances the project "Internet University Centers". The aim of the project was to open and maintain for five years the functioning of centers for open access to the global information computer network Internet at 32 Russian universities. This project was financed together with the government of the Russian Federation. Soros' contribution was $100 million, and the Russian government's contribution was $30 million. It is believed that this is the only obligation that the government has fulfilled in full and on time. George Soros is called nothing less than a living legend of the financial market or a financial genius. Back in 1994, investments in a network of charitable foundations and other institutions reached $300 million, in 1995 and 1996 - $350 million each. But since 1997, Soros has had a "black streak". Almost all investments brought huge losses. Deciding to retire, he came to grips with funding programs for science and the arts. And all his failures began with the acquisition of a controlling stake Russian company Svyazinvest (in 1998 he himself called this investment "the main mistake of his life"). In 1990, on the initiative of Soros, the Central European University was founded in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw. And he is also an honorary doctor of the New School for Social Research (New York), Oxford and Yale Universities.

George Soros is known not only as a financier and philanthropist, but also as a social thinker, author of a number of books and articles, for whom the formation of an open society in the post-communist world is a fundamental value and central idea. In addition to numerous articles, George Soros has written the books "Alchemy of Finance" (1987), "Discovering the Soviet System" (1990), "Supporting Democracy" (1991).


As of November 2009, the fortune of George Soros was estimated at 11 billion dollars, as of September 2012 - 19 billion. For 2016 - 24.9 billion US dollars. According to Business Week magazine, he has donated more than $5 billion to charitable causes throughout his life, with one billion of that five coming from Russia.

George Soros is an American financier, trader and investor, also famous for his philanthropic activities. life path Soros gives rise to many doubts and is regarded ambiguously: someone speaks of him as a noble creator of a network of charitable institutions, others call him a speculator who is also guilty of currency crises.

George Soros was born on August 12, 1930 in Budapest. His real name is Gyorgy Shorosh. The future financier was born in a middle-class family Jewish origin. Father Tivadar Shorosh worked in the legal industry and also tried to publish his own magazine in the less popular Esperanto. Tivadar participated in the First World War and managed to return to his native Budapest only after three years of captivity in Siberia.

Therefore, his father taught George, first of all, the art of survival. Mother Elizabeth, who did not know such horrors of war, looked at the world in a positive way and introduced her son to art. Most of all, the young Soros liked painting and drawing. In addition, he made great strides in the study foreign languages: In addition to his native Hungarian, he spoke English, German and French. Also, the guy was fond of sailing, swimming, tennis. And from a young age, he always beat his friends in Monopoly.

Classmates recall that at school the future financier behaved boldly and defiantly, loved to participate in fights. At the same time, his tongue is perfectly suspended, and what he believed in, Soros defended almost at the cost of his life. George was an average student, sometimes demonstrating results, sometimes sliding down to the level of a C student.


Soros was less than 10 years old when the brutal and merciless Second World War. The one million community of Jews in Hungary began to live in fear that they would suffer the fate of their compatriots from other countries who were destroyed. European countries. The lifestyle of the Soros family has become a constant desire to hide. For weeks they huddled in basements, and at best - in the basement and attics of the houses of acquaintances who agreed to receive them for a few days.

Tivadar Shorosh in those days was engaged in forging documents. Thanks to this, the man saved the lives of his family members and other Jews, although he was threatened with execution for this. In the autumn of 1945, when the danger was finally over, George Soros again went to school. But life in constant fear of destruction by the Nazis left its mark on him: the guy longed to go to the West, to leave his native Hungary. He began to implement this plan in 1947, when he was seventeen years old, alone. However, Soros was helped financially by his father, as well as by his aunt, who moved to Florida.


First, George visited Bern, Switzerland, then went to London. There he periodically found ways to earn a living: either he got a job as a waiter in a restaurant, or he picked apples on a farm, or he learned the profession of a house painter. And in 1949 he entered the London School of Economics, graduating in an accelerated format in two years. Soros was formally listed as a student of the school for another year and received a diploma only in 1953.

A diploma in economics did not at all guarantee George a job, and he again had to do odd jobs. However, then the future millionaire already realized that in order to receive large incomes, it is necessary to “join” the investment business. His first job in finance was as an intern at Singer & Friedlander. And in 1956, the novice investor realized that it was time to move to New York.

Business

George began his career in New York by buying securities in one state and selling them in another (this is called international arbitration). When a surcharge on foreign investment was introduced in the United States in 1963, the financier considered this business not profitable enough and closed it.

A few years later, Soros worked as head of research at the Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder brokerage company, and a couple of years later he was appointed manager of the Double Eagle fund, which the company founded. In 1973, Soros left his employers and founded his own foundation called Quantum. Jim Rogers became the junior partner in this business, and the assets of Double Eagle investors were taken as the basis for organizing the fund.


The Quantum Fund specialized in speculation in currencies, securities, and commodities. By the end of the 1980s, George Soros' fortune had already exceeded one hundred million dollars. Over the long term, the Soros and Rogers fund has been successful, but it has also had bad periods. For example, during Black Monday in 1987, when one of the largest stock market crashes in the history of mankind occurred, George ordered to close existing positions and go into cash. Prior to this decision, the fund's annual profit rate reached 60%, but after that, Quantum not only lost profitability, but also went negative: in annual terms, the loss ratio was 10%.

Soon, Soros decided to involve the fund's titled asset manager, Stanley Druckenmiller, with the help of which the financier managed to increase his fortune even more. Stanley worked at Quantum until 2000.

An important date for George was September 16, 1992, when the pound sterling collapsed. On this event, the businessman earned over a billion dollars, and Soros is often called one of the culprits of this collapse.


In the late 1990s, the billionaire spoke warmly about Russia and even decided to do business with an entrepreneur. Together with him, he acquired a quarter of the shares of OJSC Svyazinvest, which depreciated twice after the 1998 crisis broke out. Subsequently, George Soros called this acquisition the worst investment.

With age, the financier is less interested in investments, trading on the stock exchange and spends more time on charity. In 2011, he announced that his investment fund was shutting down. Since then, Soros has been involved in financial transactions only to increase equity and the growth of the well-being of their own family.

Fund

The George Soros hedge fund called Open Society was founded in 1979. The billionaire's funds have been created in several dozen countries. Including his organization (the Soviet-American Foundation "Cultural Initiative") worked in the USSR. It was formed to support culture, science and education, but was closed due to high level corruption.


At the end of the 20th century, the Soros Foundation spent about a hundred million dollars on the Russian project "University Internet Centers", thanks to which 33 universities had high-tech Internet centers for that time. Over the years, the Open Society Institute has provided grants to representatives of the cultural and scientific community however, these payments ceased in 2004.

In 2015, the Soros Foundation was included in the list of undesirable non-profit organizations for the Russian Federation, which is why its work in the country is now impossible. However, a number of charitable and non-profit foundations created in Russia with the support of this organization are still working today.

State

In 2017, the fortune of George Soros is estimated at $25.2 billion. Some investors believe that he is endowed with an incredible gift of financial foresight, others see the reasons for his success in the use of classified insider information.


The billionaire himself developed the theory of the reflexivity of stock markets, which explains the impressive growth of his wealth. He wrote books about his views on financial reality: "The Alchemy of Finance", "The Crisis of World Capitalism", " Soap bubble American Supremacy" and others.

Personal life

The first wife of George Soros is Annalise Whitshak, with whom the financier lived for 23 years. His second wife is Susan Weber, whom he married in the same 1983. She was a quarter of a century younger than her new husband and studied art in New York. This family has existed for 22 years.


After his divorce from Susan, the billionaire dated Adriana Ferreira, a popular Brazilian television star. However, Soros still did not marry the Latin American beauty, and after parting, she sued him. The woman demanded that the investor pay her $ 50 million as compensation for harassment, moral damage and beatings.

On modern photos of George Soros, you can see that this man, despite his advanced age, is still ready to lead an active life. The story of his new marriage can serve as clear evidence of this: in 2013, George tied the knot with 42-year-old nutritional supplement saleswoman and yoga specialist Tamiko Bolton. The wedding took place at the Karamur Music and Art Center, 500 people were invited to it.


From his first two marriages, the billionaire has five children: sons Alexander, Jonathan, Gregory and Robert, as well as daughter Andrea. Some children followed in the footsteps of their father, a financier: Jonathan first worked in his investment fund, and then founded his own company.

George Soros now

The biography of George Soros has become the ground for gossip and gossip many times. For example, in the fall of 2016, a rumor swept that the billionaire had died. In the same year, Ukraine reported about the secret visit of the financier: Soros allegedly intends to use the country to destabilize the Russian economy. Such "facts" exist at the level of speculation, since no serious evidence has been presented in their favor.

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