Biography of George Soros. Who is George Soros? George Soros family children

George Soros (Gyorgy Shoros)(English) George Soros, Hung. Soros György, bore the surname until 1936 Schwartz; R. listen)) is an American financier, investor and philanthropist. A supporter of the theory of an open society and an opponent of “market fundamentalism”. Follower of the ideas of Karl Popper. His activities are controversial different countries ah and various circles of society. He is often called a financial speculator. Considered "the man who broke the Bank of England".

Biography. Business career

• August 12 - born in Budapest, into a middle-income Jewish family. George's father, Tivadar Schwartz, was a lawyer, a prominent figure in the city's Jewish community, an Esperanto specialist and an Esperantist writer.
• g. - the family changed their surname to the Hungarian version Shoros ( Soros).
• - fleeing repression, the Soros family emigrated to the UK thanks to false documents. Soros entered the London School of Economics and successfully graduated after three years. He was lectured by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideological follower Soros became. In England, George Soros found work in a haberdashery factory, and then became a traveling salesman, but did not give up his search for work in a bank.
• - received a position at Singer and Friedlander. The work and at the same time the internship took place in the arbitration department, which was located next to the stock exchange.
• g. - The beginning of Soros’s career as a financier. He arrived in the United States 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 arbitrage, that is, buying securities in one country and selling them in another. Soros 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).
• g. - Kennedy introduced an additional tax on foreign investment, and Soros closed his business.
• - Soros becomes the leader and co-owner of the Double Eagle Foundation, which later grew into the famous Quantum Group. The fund carried out speculative transactions with securities, which brought it millions of dollars in profit. By mid-1990, Quantum's capital was $10 billion. Today, every dollar invested in this fund has turned into 5.5 thousand US dollars.
• September 16, 1992 - “Black Wednesday”. Thanks to the operations undertaken by Soros related to the sharp fall of the English pound (by 12%), he earned more than a billion dollars in a day. After this day, Soros began to be called “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England.” Soros began to call this environment “white.”

After this, a “dark streak” began in Soros’ life. In 2009, he and Potanin created the offshore Mustcom, which paid $1.875 billion for a 25% stake in Svyazinvest OJSC, but after the 1998 crisis, the share price fell by more than half. Soros angrily called this purchase “the worst investment of his entire life.” After many attempts, in 2004 he sold the shares of OJSC Svyazinvest for $625 million to Access Industries, headed by Leonard Blavatnik, who was also a shareholder of TNK-BP. At the end of 2006, Blavatnik sold a blocking stake for $1.3 billion to Comstar-UTS, part of AFK Sistema.

Soros is moving away from financial speculation and devoting himself to charitable activities.

Financial activities

George Soros's net worth is estimated at $7.2 billion. Business Week magazine estimates that he donated more than $5 billion to charities throughout his life, with one billion of those five billion going to Russia. All of Soros's major speculations in global financial markets were carried out through his secret offshore company Quantum Fund NV, registered on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao. This is the largest fund within the Soros-controlled Quantum Group of Funds.

George Soros made his fortune through short-selling (“bearish” tactics), during which he used his “theory of stock market reflexivity.” According to this theory, decisions on purchases and sales of securities are made based on expectations of prices in the future, and since expectations are a psychological category, they can be the object of informational influence. An attack on the currency of a country consists of successive information attacks through the media and analytical publications, combined with the real actions of currency speculators that undermine the financial market.

There are two main points of view regarding financial success Soros. According to the first point of view, Soros owes his successes to the gift of financial foresight. Another says that in making important decisions, George Soros uses inside information provided by high-ranking officials from the political, financial and intelligence circles of the largest countries in the world. Moreover, it is assumed that Soros is a hired manager carrying out financial projects of a group of powerful international financiers who prefer to keep a low profile and are based mainly in the UK, Switzerland and the USA.

The core of this group is believed to be the famous Rothschild family, but in addition to the Rothschilds, the organization represented by Soros includes the notorious American billionaire Marc Rich, Shaul Eisenberg, Rafi Eitan and others.

In 2002, a Paris court even found George Soros guilty of obtaining confidential information for profit and sentenced him to a fine of 2.2 million euros. According to the court, thanks to this information, the millionaire earned about $2 million from shares in the French bank Societe Generale.

Charity

see also

Notes

Links

• George Soros (English)
• Hedge Funds and the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997, Studie
• (English)

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See what "George Soros" is in other dictionaries:

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- (Soros) (b. 1930), American financier. Born in Hungary, emigrated to Great Britain in 1947, and from 1956 to the USA. In 1969, he registered the investment “Quantum Fund”, the core of the system of high-yield funds “Quantum Group”. In 1979 he created in New York... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

George Soros- American financier, investor and philanthropist. A supporter of the theory of an open society and an opponent of “market fundamentalism”. His activities are controversial in different countries and different circles of society. By voluntarily parting with part of his wealth, George Soros managed to leave his mark in many areas outside the world of finance and, to some extent, even influence the course of history. Investor and speculator George Soros also managed to become famous as a philanthropist, as a philosopher, and as a politician with very liberal views.

Childhood and youth of George Soros

George Soros (Gyorgy Soros) was born in Budapest on August 12, 1930 into a middle-class Jewish family. George's father, Tivadar Shorosh, was a lawyer and publisher (he tried to publish a magazine in Esperanto). In 1914, Tivadar volunteered for the front, was captured by the Russians and was exiled to Siberia, where he spent three years - from the first days of the revolution in 1917 until the end civil war in 1920, from where he fled back to his native Budapest.

If George's father taught him the art of survival, then his mother, Elizabeth, instilled in her son a love of art as such. George liked drawing and painting more, and music to a lesser extent. Although the family spoke Hungarian, he also learned German, English and French.

The boy achieved success in sports, especially in swimming, sailing and tennis. He was interested in all kinds of games. He especially liked to play “capital” - the Hungarian version American game"monopoly". From the age of 7, he often played this game with other children and almost always won. The worst player was George Litwin. Mutual friends were not surprised to learn that George Soros became a virtuoso financier, and Litvin... a historian.

At school, George studied sometimes well and sometimes poorly. Classmate Miklos Horn: “George was a brash, even unceremonious guy, and I was quiet and calm. He loved fights. I even became a good boxer.” According to Miklós Horn, “George was far from a brilliant student. More like average. But he had a great tongue.” And classmate Ferenc Nagel recalls: “George was often insolent to his elders. If he believed in something, he defended his faith unwaveringly. He had a tough and domineering character."

When World War II began in September 1939, George was 9 years old. The threat of a German invasion of Hungary began to loom. By the spring of 1944, the Nazis had killed most of the Jews in Europe. Fears grew that it would be the turn of the largest in Eastern Europe million-strong community of Hungarian Jews. Hiding became a way of life. The shelter was a basement surrounded by strong stone walls. They often lived for weeks at a time in the attics and basements of their friends' houses, not even knowing whether they would have to leave in the morning.

Soros admitted to his biographer that best year his life began in 1944, when he and his family were in mortal danger. That year, George Soros saw his father's death-defying document forgery save the lives of his family and many others while hundreds of thousands of Jews were exterminated by Hitler's regime. “I was lucky that my father was one of those who did not act as people usually do,” says George Soros. “If you act normally, you will most likely die.” Many Jews then did not take any action to hide or leave the string. And my family was lucky. My father was not afraid to take risks. The life lesson I learned during the war is that sometimes you can lose everything, even your own life, if you don’t take risks.”

Emigration to England

In the fall of 1945, he returned to school, but believed that he needed to immediately leave Hungary for the West. Exactly two years later, in the fall of 1947 (at the age of 17), he left the country alone. George first stayed in Bern in Switzerland, but soon moved to London. Thanks to my father's help, I had enough money for the trip. But now he had to rely only on himself, and even on transfers from his aunt, who had managed to move to Florida.

In England, George Soros got a job as a waiter at the Quaglino restaurant in Mayfair, where London aristocrats and film stars dined luxuriously and danced the night away. Sometimes, being completely broke, the future billionaire would eat the leftover cakes for his visitors. Many years later, he enviously recalled his owner’s cat, who, unlike him, ate sardines.

George's occupations changed frequently but remained casual. In the summer of 1948, he took a farm job as part of the Put Your Hands to the Soil program. In Suffolk, Soros picked apples. He also worked as a painter and then more than once boasted to his friends what a good painter he was. Odd jobs, poverty and loneliness provided few reasons for fun, and in all subsequent years Soros could not get rid of depressing memories.

Like Freud and Einstein, George Soros entered the London School of Economics in 1949. He attended some of Harold Lasky's lectures and spent a year studying with John Mead, who received his Nobel Prize in economics.

Although Soros graduated in two years, he hung around school for another year before receiving his diploma in the spring of 1953. After reading the book “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” he sought out its author, the philosopher Karl Popper, wanting to learn more. Popper was a famous philosopher who wanted to impart his wisdom to an aspiring intellectual. But he did not at all want to help Soros succeed in life. According to Popper and many others, philosophy is not intended to indicate ways to make money.

But to George Soros, philosophy seemed suitable for precisely this purpose. Later, he would move from theory to practice: he would develop a theory about how and why people think the way they do and not otherwise, and on the basis of this he would develop new theories about the functioning of the money market.

...At the age of 22, a degree in economics gave Soros little. He took on any job, starting with selling bags in Blackpool, a seaside resort in the north of England. But trade was very difficult. Even while finishing his studies, Soros’ intuition told him that big money could be earned in the investment business. Trying to get a job at one of the investment banks in London, George randomly sent letters to all the banks in the capital. When Singer & Friedlander Bank offered an intern position, Soros happily accepted. With the zeal of a beginner, he began trading shares of gold mining companies, trying to take advantage of the differences in their exchange rates in different markets. Although George was not very successful, he felt at home in this world and discovered a taste for working in the money markets. In 1956, a young investment banker decided that it was time to get ready to travel to New York.

Moving to New York

Soon after arriving in the United States, one of his London colleagues helped George get a job. A call to one of the partners of the investment firm F.M. Mayer - and Soros began to engage in currency arbitrage. He was a pioneer. “What George was doing 35 years ago has only become fashionable here in the last decade,” noted Stanley Druckenmiller. right hand Soros since 1988.

“In the early 60s, no one knew anything,” Soros recalled with a smile. - Therefore, I could attribute any indicators to the European companies that I pushed here. This is exactly the case of the blind leading the blind.”

In 1963, Soros began working for Arnold & S. Bleichroeder, one of the leading American companies in the field of investment abroad. His extensive connections in Europe and the ability to communicate fluently in five languages, including German and French, were very useful to him for successful work in this field.

Previous stock market theorists assumed that stock prices were determined primarily by rational means. Proponents of rational thinking argued that if investors have all the information about a company, then each share of the latter can be valued in accordance with its true price. But George Soros looked at things deeper. He believed: if economics is a science, then it must be objective. That is, economic actions can be passively observed without influencing the actions themselves. But this, according to Soros, is impossible in practice. How can economics claim objectivity if people - and they are the ultimate subjects of economic action - are not objective? What if these people, by virtue of their participation in economic life, cannot help but influence this life itself?

...Those who recognize the rationality and logic of economic life also argue that financial markets are always right. At least in the sense that market prices tend to take into account future events, even when their possible course is not entirely clear. According to Soros, this is simply impossible: “Any opinion about future events is biased. I do not mean to say that facts and opinions exist independently of each other. Quite the contrary, and I argued this in a more detailed exposition of the theory of reflexivity, opinions change facts.”

Creation of the first fund, the second...

Before Kennedy introduced an additional tax on foreign investment, this type of activity brought in good income. After this, 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, because he believed that he was simply conveying the thoughts of his great teachers.

In the end, while working at Arnold & Bleichroeder, where he rose to the post of vice president, George Soros decided that he was much more talented as an investor than as a philosopher or top manager. In 1967, he managed to convince the management of Arnold & Bleichroeder to establish several offshore funds and entrust him with their management.

The first fund, called First Eagle, was founded in 1967. The second, already so-called “Hedge Fund” - “Double Ing” arose in 1969. George started with his own two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Soon another six million dollars arrived from several wealthy European acquaintances. Soros soon managed to attract an international clientele of wealthy Arabs, Europeans and Latin Americans. Although Soros ran the fund from his headquarters in New York, like many offshore funds, Double Eagle was registered on the island of Curacao (Antilles, Netherlands), where it was inaccessible for taxes.

While the early 1970s ended badly for many on Wall Street, George Soros was a pleasant exception. From January 1969 to December 1974, the fund's shares almost tripled in price - from 6.1 million to 18 million dollars. In 1976, Soros's fund grew by 61.9%. Then in 1977, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 13%, Soros' fund rose another 31.2%.

Soros bought Japanese, Canadian, Dutch and French shares. For a time in 1971, a quarter of his fund's total assets were invested in Japanese stocks. One of his former employees said this: “Like any good investor, he tries to buy dimes.”

In 1979, Soros renamed his foundation Double Eagle. Now it was called “Quantum” - in honor of the uncertainty principle discovered by Heisenberg in quantum mechanics. Soros has really done well in the foreign exchange market. He sold British pounds on the eve of their fall in value. He actively traded in English government bonds, the so-called gold-cut papers, which were in great demand because they could be purchased in parts. Soros bought these bonds, rumored to be worth a billion dollars, earning about 100 million at once.

By 1980, 10 years after the creation of the hedge fund Doble Eagle (Quantum), Soros achieved an unprecedented increase in the value of assets - by 102.6%. By that time, their price had risen to $381 million. By the end of 1980, Soros’s personal fortune was estimated at $100 million.

Ironically, the main beneficiaries of Soros's talent, in addition to the investor himself, were several wealthy Europeans - these are the same people who contributed much-needed initial capital to the Soros fund in 1969. “We didn’t need to make these people rich,” said Jimmy Rogers (a friend and colleague of Soros). “But we made them sickeningly rich.”

Retire or go into the shadows?

In June 1981, Soros appeared before the public on the cover of Institutional Investor magazine. Next to his smiling face was the phrase: “The world's greatest investment manager.” The subtitle read: “George Soros has never suffered a loss, and his successes are respectable.” We'll tell you how he caught new trends in the investment business in the 70s and eventually amassed a personal fortune of $100 million."

The article explained how Soros made his fortune. With just $15 million in assets in 1974, Soros's fund had grown to $381 million by the end of 1980. “In 12 years managing money for clients such as Geldring and Pearson in Amsterdam or the Rothschild bank in Paris, Soros never ended a financial year with a loss. In 1980, the fund showed an impressive growth rate of 102% per year. Soros turned the capital tariff into his personal fortune, estimated at approximately $100 million.”

Ironically, immediately after the publication of the article, 1981 turned out to be the worst year for the foundation. Quantum shares fell in price by 22.9%. For the first (and so far last) time, the fund ended the year without a profit. The departure of a good third of investors cut the fund's funds by half - to $193.3 million. Soros began to think about closing the fund.

Before retiring, Soros knew he had to leave the fund in good hands. He devoted almost all of 1982 to searching for this suitable person. Finally, he discovered it in the distant state of Minnesota. Jim Marquez was then a 33-year-old prodigy managing a large mutual fund, the IDS Progressive Fund, in Minneapolis.

By the end of 1982, the Quantum fund grew by 56.9%, increasing the value of its assets from $193.3 million to $302.8 million. Jim Marquez began work on January 1, 1983. Soros managed half of the fund's total assets; he divided the other half among 10 other managers. At the end of 1983, Soros and Marquez were reaping the benefits of success. The fund's assets increased by 24.9% or $75.4 million, reaching $385,532,688.

Although Soros faded into the shadows, his contribution to the work remained considerable. He continued to spend a lot of time abroad: a month and a half in London in late spring, a month in China and Japan, and a month in Europe in the fall. He spent his summers in South Hampton on Long Island (New York).

Sheer nonsense

1985 was a very successful year for Soros. Compared to 1984, Quantum demonstrated a stunning growth rate of 122.2%. The value of his assets rose from $448.9 million at the end of 1984 to $1,003 million at the end of 1985. One dollar invested in his fund in 1969 was worth $164 at the end of 1985, minus fees and expenses. Quantum's profit for 1985 amounted to $548 million. Based on Soros's 12% stake in the fund, his share of the fund's profits for 1985 was $66 million, in addition to $17.5 million in fees and a $10 million bonus from clients. In total, George Soros earned $93.5 million this year.

By early January 1986, Soros had dramatically shaken up his entire investment portfolio. Playing to increase the stock price of American companies, he more actively traded shares and futures of other countries and brought the total volume of transactions to two billion dollars. 40% of the shares and 2/3 of the foreign shares were associated with the Finnish stock exchange, Japanese railways and Japanese real estate, as well as real estate in Hong Kong.

On September 22, 1985, George Soros bought millions of Japanese yen. The next day it became known that the dollar to yen exchange rate had fallen from 239 to 222.5 yen, or by 4.3%. Soros, to his great satisfaction, earned $40 million overnight. He later called it "utter nonsense."

Richer than forty-two states

Of all the financial transactions that Soros carried out, his currency speculation is the most famous. On Black Wednesday, September 16, 1992, Soros opened a short position on the pound sterling worth more than $10 billion, earning more than $1.1 billion in one day. As a result of Soros's operations, the Bank of England was forced to conduct massive foreign exchange intervention and, ultimately, , remove the pound sterling from the mechanism for regulating exchange rates of European countries, which led to an instant fall in the pound against major currencies. It was from this moment that Soros began to be mentioned in the press as “the man who brought down the Bank of England.”

At the end of June 1993, it became known that George Soros, according to Financial World magazine, earned the most money on Wall Street in 1993. The magazine jokingly tried to make Soros's 1993 salary more tangible. “If Soros were a publicly traded company, he would rank 37th in terms of profit in the United States, between Bank One and McDonald's. His salary exceeds the GDP (gross domestic product) of at least forty-two UN member states and is approximately equal to the GDP of countries such as Guadeloupe, Burundi or Chad. In other words, he can buy 5,790 Rolls-Royce cars at a price of $190,000 each. Or pay for the education of all students at Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Columbia combined for three years.”

The magazine also noted that in 1993, Soros alone earned as much as the McDonald's corporation with 169 thousand employees. All of his investment funds did well: Quantum Emerging Growth increased their net asset value by 109%, and Quantum and Quota each increased their net worth by 72%.

Secrets of George Soros' Success

George Soros's modus operandi stems from a combination of his personal qualities that may be simply unique.

Firstly, his enormous natural intelligence (like Andrew Carnegie, Aristotle Onassis...). Soros understands better than anyone the cause-and-effect relationships throughout the global economy. If A happened, then B should also happen, and after it C (at the same time, various countries peace).

Secondly, he is very determined. He himself may be denying his courage when he states that the meaning of survival secrets is the key to successful investments. And knowing these secrets sometimes means lowering the stakes in the game, preventing losses when they are unacceptable and always having sufficient reserves. I emphasize: instant reduction in rates (the decision is made in a split second).

Thirdly, Soros’ actions simply require strong nerves. “I was in his office when he made decisions on deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Daniel Doron, a law expert and director of the Jerusalem Center for Economic Progress. - I wouldn't sleep at night from fear! And he plays with such sums! This requires nerves of steel. Maybe he just hardened them so much..."

Fourthly, dispassionateness. Allan Raphael, who worked with Soros in the 1980s, believes that a rare stoicism among investors served George well. Such people can be counted on one hand. When George makes a mistake, he doesn't get angry. But he does not say that he is right and not others. He immediately admits his mistake and leaves the game, because continuing to make incorrect bets threatens ruin. You need to remember this all the time, even at home or in your sleep. It completely consumes you. His eyes pop out of his head. If this business were easier, even laboratory assistants would be involved in it. But it requires extraordinary self-discipline, self-confidence and, most importantly, dispassion.”

Fifthly, George Soros has extraordinary intuition (again, like Andrew Carnegie, Aristotle Onassis...). Inscrutable insights into when it’s worth speculating on a large scale and when to quit the game, awareness of when you understand the situation correctly and when you’re wrong, etc., etc.

“Summarizing” the talents of George Soros, the investor, Byron Win states: “George’s genius lies in his extraordinary self-discipline. He looks at the market from a purely practical point of view and knows what forces influence stock prices. George understands that the market contains both rational and emotional aspects. And he knows that he also makes mistakes sometimes.”

J. Soros: “As a rule, I simply put forward a certain hypothesis and test it on the market. If I'm wrong and the market reacts differently, then I'm very worried. Sciatica begins, but when I correct the mistake, the pain disappears. I feel at ease. This is how intuition manifests itself.” Soros' intuition is manifested in his ability to foresee changes in the stock market in one direction or another. You can't learn this in school, not even at the London School of Economics or Harvard Business School. Very few people have such a gift. Soros is among them.

Perhaps the most striking character trait of Soros, the one that best explains his talents as an investor, turned out to be his ability to enter a certain closed club that included the entire top of the international financial community. No applications are accepted for this club. Most of its members are political and economic leaders of the richest countries: prime ministers, finance ministers, and directors of central banks. According to rough estimates, their total number does not exceed two thousand people, scattered throughout the world.

Few, very few investors are allowed into this club like Soros. While others read about leaders in the newspapers, Soros interacts with them directly: having breakfast with the finance minister, lunching with the central bank director, or paying a social visit to the prime minister.

Large financial losses

Since 1997, Soros has had a “black streak”. Almost all investments brought huge losses. And all his failures began with the acquisition of a controlling stake Russian company“Svyazinvest” (in 1998 he himself called this investment “ main mistake own life"). At that time, Soros and Potanin created the offshore Mustcom, paying $1.875 billion for a 25% stake in Svyazinvest OJSC, but at the end of the 1998 crisis the share price was already several times less. Soros sold the company's shares to Access Industries for $625 million in 2004. And the buyer soon resells them for $1.3 billion to Comstar-UTS, part of AFK Sistema. Thus, Soros could earn a huge amount with the right tactics.

Talk about Soros losing his financial sense began in business circles in Europe and America already in the summer of 1999. Then it became known that Quantum Fund “lost weight” by almost a billion dollars in just a few months. About $700,000,000 went down the drain in an attempt to short the shares of Internet companies. In early 1999, Soros sold off these shares, predicting that "the bubble would soon burst." Since April 1999, the value of these shares on the stock market, on the contrary, has been growing at a breakneck pace. Soros squandered another $300,000,000 by betting on the growth of the new-born euro.

Other Soros funds lost another $500,000,000 on the same miscalculations in the first half of 1999. Thus, in just six months, Soros shamefully squandered one and a half billion. He had never lost such money before. Over the previous 30 years of Quantum’s existence, its income grew annually by an average of 30%. Shareholders rushed to withdraw capital from Soros funds. Investors were not deterred by the fact that things were not so bad everywhere in Soros’s financial empire. For example, the European “Quota”, which is part of it, manages assets worth $2,000,000, managed to increase their value by 20%. Soros withstood this blow. He managed not only to stop the outflow of capital from his funds, but also to attract new investments. But at the end of 1999 he failed again. He invested heavily in Internet stocks, this time without calling them a bubble. At first, it even seemed that Quantum had taken revenge: at the beginning of 2000, the value of assets under its management rose to $10,500,000,000.

But the market played a cruel joke on Soros for the second time. If a year ago, according to one of Quantum’s top managers, the fund’s management “considered too early that the Internet bubble might burst,” but now they simply missed the collapse of the NASDAQ index. In just two weeks in April, Quantum lost $3,000,000,000. Stanley Druckenmiller, who has managed the fund since 1989, said: “I’m crushed. I should have withdrawn assets from the market in February, but for me this business was like a drug,” and at the end of April I resigned.

In just the first quarter of 2000, Soros lost, according to some estimates, $5 billion, that is, more than three times more than in the “tragic” 1999. He lost, including because the euro exchange rate continued to fall. The financier stepped on the same rake twice, continuing to hope for the potential of the new currency. Now the elderly billionaire has decided enough is enough. This way you can lose your legal pension. “The time for big deals is over for us,” Soros announced as he closed the largest of his funds. He still has something left, though.

George Soros is known not only as a financier, but also as a philanthropist. American law allows its citizens to spend no more than fifty percent of their income on charitable purposes. George Soros was and remains the only US citizen who fully and regularly exhausts this limit. This is approximately 300 million per year.

“Wealth has given me the opportunity to do what I think is important, to realize my dreams of a better world order... Sooner or later, people and their elected governments must take responsibility for creating an Open Society - not only in Russia, but throughout the world . When that time comes, my motives will become clear, and no one will ask why I provided help.”GeorgeSoros

In 1979, George Soros created his first charitable foundation, the Open Society Fund, in the United States. Currently, Soros spends an average of about $300 million annually on his non-profit projects. .

Now he has created charitable foundations in more than 30 countries. In 1988, in the USSR, Soros organized the Cultural Initiative fund in support of science, culture and education, but the fund was later closed because the money was used for the personal purposes of certain individuals. In 1995, it was decided to organize a new Open Society Foundation in Russia.

The second time, Soros was amazed to discover that dollars allocated for scientific programs ended up in suspicious banks, and without difficulty grasping the meaning of the concept of “spinning money,” Soros came to the conclusion that the ratio of corruption and efficiency in this case leaves much to be desired. After which the composition of the Moscow board immediately changed.

From 1996 to 2001, the Soros Foundation invested about $100 million in the University Internet Centers project, as a result of which 33 Internet centers appeared in Russia. .

At the end of 2003, Soros officially closed down financial support its charitable activities in Russia. Already in 2004, the Open Society Institute stopped issuing grants. But the structures created with the assistance of the Soros Foundation are now actively working without his direct participation.

Such projects include the Moscow graduate School social and economic sciences, foundation of culture and art "Institute PRO ARTE", International Charitable Foundation named after D. S. Likhachev, non-profit fund for the support of book publishing, education and new information technologies"Pushkin Library".

With such a scale, of course, the question of intentions arises. Some argue that making donations is better than paying taxes. The latter think that Soros does charity work out of love for democracy, which he calls an open society. Still others suspect that Soros is tormented by complexes and guilt over his speculative actions. Some claim that Soros has delusions of grandeur and a thirst for world domination, and is preparing to capture future markets. Others believe that Soros is buying public opinion in this way, blaming him for the collapse of national currencies. Others persistently argue that Soros is a spy, and his philanthropy is a cover for collecting intelligence or carrying out political sabotage. And all this seems to be true.

Croatian President Tudjman accused Soros of supporting traitors and called the concept of an open society a dangerous new ideology. Romanian President Iliescu argued that Soros was maliciously supporting the opposition, although the foundation only helped independent newspapers there.

In addition to charity, George Soros provides financial support for initiatives to legalize marijuana and allow same-sex bars. In his article "Why I Support Marijuana," published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, he calls on the US government to legalize marijuana.

“Our marijuana laws do more harm than good,” Soros writes. - “Marijuana has been and remains the most popular illegal substance, both in the United States and in other countries, and a ban on its distribution only leads to higher prices and increased negative attitude to these laws."

Soros is accused of stealing and exporting scientific developments, on which the Soviet authorities were still spending billions, under the guise of charitable activities in science, and contributing to the brain drain from Russia. He did not and does not hide the fact that all his “charitable” activities were aimed at destroying Soviet statehood.

It is difficult to “underestimate” his contribution to Russian culture. Having at one time taken into his own hands the remnants of the library acquisition system, and especially school and university ones, that were preserved after the collapse of the USSR, Soros rewrote many textbooks. The quality of many textbooks on humanitarian subjects was so monstrously low, and the textbooks were so crudely ideologized that it was almost time to talk about a crime against the nation.

The main program of action of the Soros brigade in Russia is aimed at the minds of our citizens. And above all, on the minds of the intelligentsia and youth. Once they swallow the hook, everything else will follow. When you observe the progress of this program over the past ten years, you want to call it magnificent, if only it is permissible to apply this word to something vile and cynical. Can we say “a magnificent operation to poison wells”? The point is that there is pathos, cynical creative play, and satanic beauty in Soros's work. This is a burglar and molester with artistry.

Soros is an opponent of a strong centralized government in Russia. This is his first principle. After such words, can one doubt that the organizations working in Russia with Soros’s money are conducting subversive activities, that is, contributing to everything that weakens and decentralizes the state? It’s just stupid to doubt it - bankers won’t take a penny out of their wallet in vain. How much Soros hates the very idea of ​​a strong state with an Orthodox culture became clear when he financed the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague.

First of all, Soros is not a banker for whom profit is important. He heads the special forces of the shadow world government, waging financial wars, the purposes of which we can only guess.

Leading aristocratic and royal families Europe, centered in the British House of Windsor, created the "Club of the Islands". This happened at the time of the collapse of the British Empire after the Second World War. Instead of using the powers of the state to achieve its geopolitical goals, this network was developed, supported by private financial interests tied to the old aristocratic oligarchy of Western Europe. The center of this “Club of Islands” is the financial center - London. Soros is one of those who in the Middle Ages were called - Hofjuden, "Court of the Jews", which was deployed by aristocratic surnames. The most important of these "Jews who are not Jews" are the Rothschilds, who launched Soros' career.

Books by George Soros

Soros wrote many books during his life, including The Alchemy of Finance and Sustaining Democracy...

Now George Soros lives in the penthouse of one of the skyscrapers in the center of New York. He arrived in Manhattan about 50 years ago with big ambitions and just a couple of dollars in his pocket. Today he is richer and more influential than many of the states whose flags fly at the UN Headquarters not far from his current home. However, despite this, the walking embodiment of the American dream, the first person in the world who managed to earn 20 billion in one year and became famous for the collapse of the Bank of England, remains a mystery to the whole world in many respects. His philosophical revelations and thoughts on finance and economics in numerous books and publications actually once again convince us of the ambiguity of the figure of George Soros. Journalists and biographers have never come to a consensus on what is the secret of his success and what motives lie behind his actions.

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His name once made finance ministers and presidents of different countries tremble. The billionaire, who made his fortune through currency speculation, at one time brought down the monetary systems of entire states. And now George Soros is a harmless old man with watery eyes and a hearing aid...

Father's secret

They say that the future financial genius earned his first money as a child. At school, for a reasonable fee, he sold homemade newspapers, which he wrote and drew himself.

Gyorgy Soros, who later became George Soros, was born in 1930 into a family of intelligent and wealthy Hungarian Jews in Budapest. His mother brought her husband a good dowry and instilled in her two sons a love of art.

And from his dad, George, according to him, inherited the ability to make money and take risks. " My father didn't work, he just made money."- Soros once said in an interview. Tivador Shorosh was a prosecutor by profession, but he was never passionate about his service. At the same time, he loved to live in grand style.

Many people called Soros’s father a sneak, but his son sincerely considered him a hero. The family loved to talk about how George’s father fought in the First World War and was captured by Russia, and then spent three whole years wandering around Russia, reaching his native Hungary.

During World War II, Tivador's "cunning" served the family well. In 1944, the prosecutor started producing fake passports, which he sold to rich Jews for a lot of money, and simply gave to the poor. These fakes saved many from death during the German occupation.

After the war, when a socialist regime had already been established in Hungary, George was just finishing school. The future financial tycoon did not want to live under the “Reds”, and with the support of his father, he emigrated to London.

At first, the free Western world met the emigrant boy with hostility. At first, he huddled in the apartment of his fellow countrymen and was hired to work either as a waiter or as a porter... And sometimes, when he was hungry, he envied the street cat that was gnawing on herring.

Only two years later George managed to become a student at the London School of Economics. He had difficulty finding money to pay for his studies, working at night as a porter at the station. And when he received his diploma, at first he sold handbags until he was hired as an intern at a bank.

George Soros always remembered the London period of his life as a nightmare. “Well, I’ve hit rock bottom,” he thought then. - From here you can only move upward."."He always looked a little unsettled", - a bank colleague said about George.

By the way, Soros never made it to London. While working at a bank, he began trading shares of gold mining companies, but saved only five thousand dollars in three years. With this money, in 1956, an ambitious young man set off to conquer America.

The mystery of money

Alchemy big money was revealed to Soros only in the States. And even then not right away.

At first, the future billionaire was engaged in the purchase and resale of shares of European companies in an investment firm in New York. He was helped in this matter by the knowledge of several foreign languages and good connections in Europe.

However, it took Soros years to climb to the top of the financial Olympus. Only in the late 60s did he register his first investment fund, First Eagle, in an offshore zone, investing the accumulated $250 thousand into it.

Another $6 million was contributed to the fund by Soros' clients - rich people from Europe. By the way, the first investors never regretted it. Ten years later, the value of the fund was already 12 million dollars, and in 1980 - 381 million.

Soros's fortune in 1980 reached $100 million. The financier never revealed the secret of his unprecedented success. " He buys stocks when his back hurts and sells them when the pain goes away.", Soros’ adult son once said jokingly.

Many people spoke about the financier’s extraordinary intuition. But this was also due to his enormous natural intelligence and ability to understand the cause-and-effect relationships of the world economy. And also determination and nerves of steel: Soros could dispassionately put huge amounts of money on the line.

They say that the great financier’s personal life was never in the foreground. He married for the first time at the age of 31, to a German woman, Anna-Louise, whom he met in a company of emigrants. They lived happily together for 17 years, giving birth to three children.

In 1983, George left his first family for a young American woman, Susan Weber, the daughter of a New York handbag and shoe manufacturer. He also lived happily married to her for twenty years, giving birth to two more children. In a word, nothing interesting!

Even after becoming fabulously rich, George Soros never fell in love with luxury. Unlike his fellow millionaires, he did not buy yachts or private jets, flew only in business class and dressed modestly. Even outwardly, he looked not like a millionaire, but like a modest university professor.

The main “high” of his life in those years, apparently, was the process of making money itself. On September 22, 1985, Soros, for example, became $40 million richer overnight. The day before, he bought millions of dollars worth of Japanese yen, which rose sharply in price the next day.

And on September 15, 1992, Soros again earned 1 billion pounds sterling overnight and became famous throughout the world as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of Great Britain." On that “Black Wednesday” the British pound sterling fell in price by half. And this was the work of Soros.

The secret of life

"Millionaires spend money, billionaires make history"- this phrase belongs to Soros himself. In the early 90s, the financier’s personal fortune exceeded two billion dollars, and, apparently, political ambitions came into play.

At this time, Soros began to actively engage in charity work around the world and interfere in state politics. Branches Charitable Foundation Soros were opened in 26 countries, millions of dollars were allocated for humanitarian aid countries of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.

There were various rumors about why Soros needed this. They said that in this way the billionaire was hiding from paying taxes. It was assumed that he had delusions of grandeur and a thirst for power. They accused him of buying public opinion in those countries where he was collapsing the national currency. That he is a spy, and this is his cover, finally....

According to unverified information, George Soros financed opposition parties in his native Hungary back in the 80s. Later, he allegedly directed enormous resources to finally finish off the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the territory of the former Soviet Union.

There is an opinion that political ambitions played a cruel joke on George Soros. He supposedly did not earn big dividends from politics, but he lost his unique financial sense. And from the late 90s, a period of great bad luck began in the life of Soros.

In 1997, the financier made a billion-dollar purchase in Russia, which he later called the worst investment of his entire life. These were shares of the Russian company Svyazinvest, which Soros had to sell at half the price after the 1998 default.

And then came the unfortunate failures with shares of Internet companies, then - unsuccessful fraud with the euro. And every time - multimillion-dollar losses. “The time for making money has passed for me,” Soros said. Apparently not wanting to tempt fate any longer, in 2004 he handed over the billions of dollars of his business to his sons for management.

They say that last years George Soros lives like a retiree in a penthouse in Manhattan and willingly advises journalists on the global financial crisis. And the American grandfather now has a stormy personal life.

Soros divorced his second wife in 2004. And since then, the retired billionaire's friends have included the young American violinist Jennifer Chun, the widow of the King of Jordan, Noor, Miss Russia 1998 Anna Malova, and the young Russian blonde Marina Celle.

American, hedge fund manager, philanthropist, business tycoon, investor, philosopher, writer and publicist. This is all George Soros. short biography his is like that. He was born in Hungary on August 12, 1930 into a Jewish family. Before emigrating to England and later the United States, he survived the Nazi occupation and one of the most brutal battles of World War II in Budapest.

Financial genius

He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management, a hedge fund founded in 1969. After decades of success, the company returned money to most investors in 2011 to focus on managing the assets that Soros owns. George, whose net worth exceeds $20 billion, is one of the... richest people in the world. Over the entire period of its activity, the main income generator, Quantum Fund, has brought in more than $40 billion in profit. A $1,000 investment in the fund in 1969, by some estimates, became $4 million in 2000.

Investor George Soros is known as a very experienced short-term speculator, prone to bold adventures in financial markets around the world. In 1992, he received the title of the man who bankrupted the Bank of England for trading operations during the so-called. Black Wednesday - currency crisis in the UK. Then opening a short position in pounds equivalent to $10 billion brought him a profit of more than $1 billion.

His investment style was often controversial. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad accused the billionaire of using his wealth to provoke the Asian financial crisis of 1997. However, years later, he would recant his accusation.

In 2002, Soros was convicted by a French appeals court and fined €2.2 million for allegedly selling Société Générale shares using inside information about a future takeover of the bank.

The famed financier has made headlines in recent years as an outspoken supporter of liberal values, a wealthy political donor and philanthropist. He heads the Open Society Foundation, founded in 1979 with the goal of “building vibrant and tolerant societies where governments are accountable and inclusive of all people.”

An active philanthropist, between 1979 and 2011 Soros donated $8 billion to various causes.

Youth and education

George Soros, whose biography began in Budapest (Hungary), in 1930, nine years before the start of World War II, knew firsthand what it was. His father, Tivadar, was a prisoner of war during and after the First World War. His imprisonment ended when he fled Russia to marry and begin his legal practice in Budapest. The family also did not shy away from trade. Soros' mother, Elizabeth, came from a family that ran a silk goods store.

Tivadar was a passionate proponent of Esperanto, a language that was invented in the late 1880s to help people overcome national differences and contribute to world peace and understanding. Tivadar, oddly enough, learned the language in the Russian camp where he was kept, and whose commandant was an avid Esperantist. The idealism of language inspired Tivadar and he helped found a literary magazine on it artificial language. He also taught him youngest son, and spoke it at home. In 1936, when Hitler hosted the Berlin Olympics, Tivadar changed the family's surname from Schwartz to Soros, which means "will soar" in Esperanto.

In later interviews, George would say that his parents were non-religious Jews and were careful about expressing their religious background. In March 1944, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary to prevent the country from reaching a treaty with the rapidly advancing Western Allies.

George Soros (photo) in his youth, when he was 13 years old, experienced the arrival of the Nazi army, and he felt its presence in his life for a long time. The city authorities, who collaborated with the Nazis, banned Jewish children from attending school, and soon deportations of Jews from Budapest began, mainly to the death camp at Auschwitz.

George Soros's family was hiding; he himself pretended to be the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. As a teenager, the financial genius worked with his father, making thousands of false documents for people trying to escape the Nazis. In later interviews, Soros called this time his father's finest hour, referring to his nobility: doing free paperwork for people who were obviously in danger of being deported to death camps, only if necessary asking for modest compensation to cover associated costs, but also demanding from the rich as much money as they could afford to pay.

In 1945, the battle for Budapest raged - Soviet and German soldiers fought fierce street battles throughout the city. George survived the siege and battles, which claimed the lives of some 38,000 inhabitants within three months. He was 14 years old.

With the end of the war, Soros left for England, where, penniless, he searched and found an Esperantist society in London, which sheltered him. Later, in 1947, he attended the London School of Economics (LSE). The future billionaire survived by working as a waiter and loader on the railroad.

At LSE he had the opportunity to study with the philosopher Karl Popper, who is considered one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th century and the originator of the term "open society".

In 1951, George Soros graduated from LSE with a BA in Philosophy. He stayed an additional three years to complete his PhD in 1954.

Like many people with such an education, Soros had difficulty getting a job. At first he was engaged in selling goods along the coast of Wales. Being depressed, George began systematically writing letters to the managers of commercial banks in London. Most did not respond, but one letter landed on the desk of a compatriot, the managing director of Singer & Friedlander, who offered the young man an ordinary job.

George Soros: biography and photos

In 1954, the ex-traveling salesman began working as a clerk at the London merchant bank Singer & Friedlander and eventually reached the level of the arbitration department. While he was working in a bank, one of George's colleagues, Robert Mayer, recommended him for a position in his father's brokerage house, F. M. Mayer.

George Soros, whose biography changed dramatically after accepting an offer to work as an arbitrage trader at F. M. Mayer, moved from London to New York in 1956. At the time, he specialized in European stocks when the creation of the Coal and Steel Community, later known as the Common Market, made his stocks popular among US investors. Having established a reputation in this area, in 1959 he moved to Wertheim & Co. as a European securities analyst.

But Soros' thoughts were elsewhere. His plan was to continue working until he had raised $500,000, which he believed would be enough to return to England to study philosophy comfortably.

Reflexivity theory

In those years, George developed the so-called. theory of reflexivity. The idea followed from the philosophy of his former teacher at the London School of Economics, Karl Popper. Soros' concept was that self-awareness is part of a particular environment. This meant that the act of evaluation in any market would necessarily be reflected in the actions of market participants, creating within the market a virtuous or vicious circle. In addition, any prediction can change the behavior of financial market entities, making a false statement true, or vice versa.

George realized that the idea could be used outside of philosophy.

According to Soros, the concept of reflexivity allowed him to look at financial markets differently, better than existing theory. This gave him an edge, first as a securities analyst and then as a hedge fund manager.

Instead of returning to London, George Soros continued his work, moving in 1963 to the New York bank Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder. Here he rose to vice president, where his success convinced the company to contribute $100,000 to the investment fund he headed in 1966. This was the first big test of Soros's philosophy, which he had developed to a mind-bogglingly complex state.

According to the financier, he felt as if he had a major discovery that would fulfill his fantasy of becoming an important philosopher. Delving deeper and deeper, Soros became lost in the intricacies of his own designs. Then he decided to abandon philosophical research and focused on making money.

It worked. The following year, Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder allowed him to manage an offshore investment fund called First Eagle. Two years later, capitalizing on the success of the first venture, the company created a second, Double Eagle. This was the fund that eventually grew into the Quantum Fund.

In 1969, it was seeded with $4 million in investment capital, which included $250,000 of Soros's own funds. The investors were the Rothschild family and other wealthy Europeans.

The success of both funds continued for several years, and was stopped by federal rules regarding alleged conflicts of interest, the source of which was Soros. George resigned his position at Arnhold and S. Bleichroede. Double Eagle was spun off into his own private equity firm.

In 1973, the fund was renamed Soros. George managed $12 million in assets with Jim Rogers. Over the years, they will reinvest their earnings, along with most of the 20% annual commission.

Quantum mechanics

Shortly after physicist Werner Heisenberg discovered the principle of quantum mechanics, the investment company was renamed Quantum Fund. And she began to generate fabulous income. Unbound by the many rules that limit mutual fund managers today, Soros was able and willing to short the market during inflation and oil shortages. Between 1969 and 1980, the Quantum Fund grew a staggering 3,365%, compared to 47% for the S&P500.

By 1981, he had $400 million in assets, but that year he faced a 22% loss after an interest rate mishap. Investors fled, leaving only $200 million in assets. Soros took a leave of absence from day-to-day management of the fund to study global and monetary policies and other drivers of inflation, interest rates and exchange rates.

By George's return in 1984, the lost assets had been recovered. Armed with ideas gleaned from his sabbatical, he immediately began making big bets. In 1985, the fund received a 122% profit and George himself earned $93 million.

As the Quantum Fund grew, so did Soros's reputation as one of the best money managers in the world. In 1987, he used this to promote his philosophy. His book, titled The Alchemy of Finance, touches on the intellectual basis of his investment strategy.

By the end of the 1980s, financier George Soros began to pay attention to events in Eastern Europe. He turned over day-to-day management of the fund again in 1989, this time to his protégé Stanley Druckenmiller, who continued to deliver strong returns.

This and an improved reputation allowed Quantum Fund to continue to grow. In 1997, the foundation was reorganized into a company with limited liability, in which Soros, Druckenmiller, and chief administrative officer Gary Gladstein jointly ran the firm and its six funds. By mid-1998, the firm oversaw approximately $21.5 billion.

This success for clients continued, with a few hiccups, until July 2011. That's when Soros, concerned that the new S.E.C. about the disclosure of information could jeopardize the confidentiality of his clients, returned investor funds and invested $24.5 billion of his own funds into the Quantum Fund. In 2013, the fund received income of $5.5 billion.

Asset value

George Soros, whose net worth was $26 billion as of September 2015, is the 21st richest person in the world, according to Forbes. His humble upbringing in pre-war Hungary earned him a 10 out of 10 on Forbes magazine's Self-Reliance for Success score. This means that he received his fortune without outside help.

But Soros' position at the top of the billionaire list could be in jeopardy because tax service. Soros Fund Management, which manages most of his wealth, has amassed about $13 billion in assets thanks to generous U.S. tax deferrals granted to hedge funds until 2008.

These deferrals allowed the financier to defer taxes on client awards and reinvest them. This loophole allowed Soros' untaxed income to continue to grow. The problem is that Congress closed this option and anyone who used it for years will have to pay deferred taxes as of 2017.

Considering that Soros works in New York and falls under the most high class taxes, he will have to pay state and city taxes of 12% plus 3.8% investment income from Obamacare. And all this after he pays the federal government 39.6%.

Some estimates place Soros' tax liability at approximately $6.7 billion. He is an active supporter of liberal principles and advocates for higher taxes, increased government spending and regulation. So it will be interesting to see him part with a significant portion of his net worth.

A staunch democrat

When it comes to politics, Soros, up to this point, has backed his words with money. In the 2014 election, he spent $3,763,400 on Democratic candidates. His son contributed another $1.7 million. According to some estimates, between 1998 and 2010, the billionaire and his funds contributed more than $12 million to leftist lobbying. While that pales in comparison to the Koch brothers' $50 million in right-wing lobbying contributions over the same period, it is nonetheless a huge amount of money.

One way Soros could try to forfeit a smaller amount is through his philanthropic endeavors. Over the years, he has given away more than US$8 billion.

In 2012, the Open Society Foundation awarded more than $364 million in grants to 3,300 organizations, plus $14 million to 850 individuals. In 2009, the famous philanthropist donated $100 million to help Central and Eastern Europe recover from the effects of the global financial crisis.

His Open Society Foundation is the main beneficiary of his fortune, and it appears that he is likely to continue working for more for a long time. In 2011, the fund leased 14,000 square meters for 30 years. m of the Gold Miners Building on West 57th Street in Manhattan. The building was previously the New York headquarters of General Motors.

In addition to his $9.8 million mansion and complex in Katonah, New York, the Soros family regularly appears on the New York real estate market. In 2014 he ex-wife has put his Upper East Side townhouse on the market for $31 million, and his daughter is offering her Greenwich Village townhouse for $25 million. A year earlier, his son, an artist, was planning to sell his townhouse in Manhattan's Nolita neighborhood for just over $10 million.

The Man Who Broke the Bank of England

George Soros (photo) has been a lightning rod for criticism. His bold financial maneuvers and outspoken policies made his name a household name.

In 1992, Soros made one of the biggest bets of his career, which concerned the valuation of the English pound sterling by the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The mechanism was developed in 1979 to reduce exchange rate volatility across Europe.

George believed that the rate of this mechanism for the pound sterling was extremely unbalanced. The UK experienced inflation 3 times that of Germany, interest rates in the UK have reached a point where they are starting to hurt asset prices.

Druckenmiller, then a trader working for Soros, first identified the opportunity created by Europe's faulty exchange rate mechanism. George talked him into going all-in. On September 16, 1992, Quantum Fund borrowed £5 billion and quickly converted the currency into German marks.

This volume of trade was meant to prove that the Bank of England could not maintain the value of the pound. Soros was right. The market forced the British government to spend £27 billion in one day to support the pound. His efforts were unsuccessful and Britain eventually withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which severely devalued the pound.

This was exactly what Soros was counting on. George took a short position of over $10 billion in sterling. The deal brought in more than $1 billion in profit. In addition, the fund earned another billion US dollars by trading in Italian lira and Swedish krona.

Within a year, Soros bankrupted the Bank of England and personally earned $650 million.

Brazilian soap opera

George Soros married for the third time to 42-year-old Tamiko Bolton in 2013. His first and second marriages lasted 23 years and 18 years, respectively.

But details of his personal life became public in 2011, when his ex-girlfriend Adriana Ferreir filed a $50 million lawsuit against him alleging fraud, violence, emotional distress and assault. Former actress soap operas I dated a famous financier for 5 years.

In 2014, most of the charges were dropped, with the exception of moral damages and bodily harm. Ironically, Ferreir allegedly attacked Soros and his lawyer herself in 2014 during a deposition after they refused to allow the trial to be filmed.

At one point, Soros offered Ferreyr $6.7 million to drop the lawsuit. Her lawyer would subsequently sue her for refusing to agree to such an agreement. The ex-actress would change lawyers twice more and personally represent herself in the lawsuit against Soros when the Manhattan Supreme Court rejected it in February 2015.

George Soros. Biography. Family

George's brother, Paul, was born June 5, 1926. He is the founder of Soros Associates, which designs and builds port facilities for bulk shipping. He fled to the United States from persecution during the occupation of Hungary by the Soviet Union in 1948. He was educated at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn. In 1998, together with his wife Daisy, he founded a scholarship for the education of immigrants and their children. The couple have two sons, Peter and Jeffrey.

Soros's first wife, ethnic German Annaliese Witshak, who lost her parents during World War II, married him in 1960. She gave birth to three children - Robert Daniel (1963), Andrea (1965) and Jonathan Tivadar (1970). Divorced 1983

Second wife (since 1983) – Susan Weber (b. 1954). Divorced in 2005. Founded and is director of the Center for the Study of Art, Design History and Material Culture. Previously, she was executive director of the Open Society Institute, which was founded by George Soros. Children from this marriage are Alexander (1985) and Gregory James (1988).

Third wife (since 2013), Tamiko Bolton (b. 1971), owns an online business selling dietary supplements and vitamins. He holds a Master of Business degree from the University of Miami.

This is him, George Soros. The biography and success story of the financier and philanthropist are far from finished. A man who has earned billions of dollars from his predictions published another forecast on February 11, 2016 in the British newspaper The Guardian.

According to Soros, Russia faces default in 2017, when it comes time to pay off most of its foreign debt, and political instability, contained as long as the government ensures financial stability and a slow but steady rise in living standards, will flare up even earlier. The combination of Western sanctions with a sharp decline in oil prices will cause the fall of the ruling regime. Let's see if the great visionary's predictions come true this time.

George Soros - a fortune of 26 billion, the start-up capital began to be collected from an income of 4 pounds a week, the first jobs that he mastered were: apple picker, waiter and porter at the station.

George Soros

For many years, George Soros repeated a phrase that was remembered - “first of all, strive to survive, and only then make money.” George Soros did not accept the rules written by others, but wrote his own.

George Soros' childhood

George Soros was born on August 12, 1930 in Budapest. In a Jewish family with average income. His father was a lawyer and was involved in publishing. In 1947, fleeing Nazi repression, the Soros family emigrated to the UK using forged documents prepared by their father. Then Soros turned 17 years old. Soros entered and successfully graduated from the London School of Economics.

George Soros got his first job

George Soros took a job in England at a haberdashery factory. Although the job title was “assistant manager,” it was actually a sales job. Later, George became a traveling salesman: he drove a wretched Ford along the coast of Wales, offering goods to merchants. While still hoping to get a job at a bank, he was a waiter in a restaurant, picked apples, and even worked as a porter at the station. Already at that time, he scrupulously kept accounting of his finances. “When I started, my weekly budget was £4, then I cut my expenses to less than £4, I kept a diary of my income and expenses,” the now billionaire recalls, smiling.

Relocation of George Soros to the USA

In search of new options, George Soros immigrates to the United States in 1956. This is where the personal growth of George Soros began. First aid was provided by a father's friend from London. He got George to work at a brokerage firm, where the future billionaire mastered securities trading - international arbitration. Soros invented his own method of trading - internal arbitrage. The idea was to sell separately combined securities of stocks, bonds and warrants before they could be officially separated from each other.

Business of George Soros became unprofitable after Kennedy introduced new fees and he again took up philosophy. He is trying to work on his dissertation, which he began writing after graduating from business school. Soros resumed writing his treatise “The Heavy Burden of Consciousness.” But in 1966, George Soros decides to go back into business, leaving his work unfinished.

While working at Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, George Soros founded an offshore investment fund, First Eagle. Later, in 1969, he established another hedge fund, Double Eagle. George Soros managed these funds until 1970. In 1969, George Soros turned his attention to a new fund - Quantum. Thanks to speculative transactions with securities, over the 10 years of the fund’s existence, the profitability amounted to 3365% per year. Mainly this fund provided George Soros with a huge fortune.

In 1997, George Soros failed after acquiring a 25% stake in the Russian company Svyazinvest. This event marked the beginning of a “dark period” when almost all investments brought losses. Soros decided to leave business and engage in charity - funding education and scientific research.

George Soros developed his own “theory of market reflexivity” , based on the views of his teacher Karl Popper, and successfully applied it in the game on the stock exchange. The essence of this theory is that traders, when making decisions about buying and selling securities, proceed from the expected future price. And the expectations of market participants can be influenced psychologically in order to change the influence of fundamental factors on the market.

George Soros took a risk by conducting transactions using loans, although the market usually prefers safer methods. But he has already reached the pinnacle of his personal growth; he especially loves the excitement of the stock exchange game and the opportunity to emerge as a “winner” from a difficult situation.

George Soros now lives in an apartment in downtown New York, not far from the UN headquarters. Half a century ago, he came to Manhattan with a couple of dollars and big ambitions. Today, he has more influence and capital than some states. George Soros managed to realize the American dream, earn 20 billion in just a year and become famous for the collapse of the Bank of England. He will remain a mystery to the world in many ways. Neither journalists nor biographers can come to a common opinion: what is the secret of George Soros’ success and what motives does he pursue?

Your personal and financial growth, He expressed frugality by constantly optimizing items of income and expenses and did not lose sight of them for a day. Ask George Soros at any time what his income was yesterday, he will answer without pause.....