George Soros: biography and net worth. Financial tycoon Big financial losses
Four hundred seventy-three million to one. Such were the chances of George Soros...
(Paul Tudor Jones II, from the preface to the book by J. Soros “The Alchemy of Finance”)
The lesson I learned during the war is that sometimes you can even lose your own life if you don’t take risks.
I did not accept the rules proposed by others. If I did this, I would no longer live.
The figure of George Soros among financiers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries acquired truly cosmic proportions with demonic overtones. A person who moves global markets, an interview with whom immediately makes it to the front pages of leading publications. His level of communication is presidents and prime ministers. His statements became quotes, his books became bestsellers. The personality of Soros as a financial speculator is comparable, perhaps, only to the Wall Street legend of the 1920s - . With one significant difference. The popularity of the “prodigy” Livermore did not extend beyond stockbrokers and investors. Soros gained additional fame as a philanthropist, philosopher and public figure.
Soros has a large number of followers and admirers who hang on his every word and copy his lifestyle and work methods. For them, he is a Guru, and not only in economics. There is another, no less numerous “group of comrades” for whom Soros is a fraudster, a swindler, an “agent of world capitalism”, and simply a bad person. Soros has become a household name. Economists call "Soros" large speculators who "start currency crises for profit and pleasure" (Paul Krugman, 1996).
The purpose of this material is to present individual facts from the biography of the great investor. An attempt to separate fiction from reality. A legend from reality. Although legend is an indispensable attribute of people like George Soros, the man who “revealed”.
Biography of George Soros. The first half of the journey. 1930-1970
Childhood and adolescence 1930-1947
Very, very much is instilled into everyone in childhood. At all times, the role of parents and their example can hardly be overestimated... The future player was no exception.
George Soros was born on August 12, 1930 into a Jewish family in Budapest. His given name at birth was Gyorgy, and his last name was Schwartz. The father of the future financier is Tivadar Schwarz, a lawyer, his mother is Erzebet Szucz, a representative of a wealthy family.
J. Soros owes his future fate, views and simply the fact that he was able to survive, first of all, to his father. Tivadar Schwartz was an extraordinary person. Specialist in the artificial language Esperanto, Esperantist writer, founder and editor of a literary magazine. Plays a prominent role in the Jewish community of the Hungarian capital in the 1920s and 30s.
T. Schwartz lived an extraordinary life. Having volunteered for the First World War (so as not to miss such a chance - an interesting reason, right?) he is captured by Russia as a soldier of the Austro-Hungarian army. This is followed by a Siberian camp and an escape with a long march to Hungary. More than a risky move. The chances of a successful result were not at all great, but Tivadar won and survived...
By personal example, Schwartz Sr. was able to instill in Schwartz Jr., the future Soros, love and the ability to take risks. Often a risky move is the only possible one. The only option to save life, sometimes literally. His father’s lessons were perfectly learned by his son and helped him in the future. Stock trading and financial transactions are inseparable from reasonable and calculated risk. But even the most complex and ingenious calculation will not save a trader or investor from the need to make a choice and take risks. Again and again.
Tivadar Schwartz's special talent for foreseeing impending danger and being able to avoid it was revealed in the mid-1930s. The dictatorship of the Hungarian ruler Miklos Horthy, who entered into an alliance with Hitler, did not open up very bright prospects for local Jews. Not everyone understood this, but Schwartz Sr. calculated the situation very well.
In 1936, the family changed the Jewish-sounding surname Schwartz to the Hungarian Shoros (Soros). Tivadar was very proud of his choice. In Hungarian, Shoros is “follower,” and in his favorite Esperanto, it is the verb “to soar.”
In 1944 it became completely dangerous. German troops occupied Hungary. The new administration kindly invited Jews to register. Now everyone knows what this inevitably led to. It wasn't obvious then. But not for a person who has taken a new last name. It's hard to fool someone like that. How difficult it will be to guide his son through the stock exchange in thirty to forty years. Shorosh Sr. makes fake documents for his relatives. Moreover, they begin to live separately from each other, hoping to get lost among ordinary Christian Hungarians. The operation to save the family is successful. The Soros escaped the fate of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews who became victims of the Holocaust. George gets a chance: “I was lucky that my father was one of those people who didn’t do what people usually do.”
Studying in London and working outside of my specialty 1947-1953
In 1947, J. Soros left Hungary, already occupied by Soviet troops, for London using forged documents. There is a legend that he made a choice between the British capital, where the Air Force is located, the wave of which the whole family “caught” during the war years, and Moscow. Intuition did not fail the future “financial tycoon” even then. Once again, Soros Jr. heeded his father’s advice.
In the same year (according to other sources - in 1949) he entered the London School of Economics and Political Science, which he graduated after 3 years. The educational institution is famous throughout the world for its teachers (including many Nobel laureates) and graduates. Among the latter are John F. Kennedy and, oddly enough, Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones. It's funny that the English abbreviation of the London School of Economics LSE coincides with the short name of the London Stock Exchange, to which Soros will soon have a direct connection.
At the School, Soros attended lectures and became a follower of the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, who had a significant influence on the socio-political views of the future investor.
Graduation from the School did not open the doors of banks, investment or trust companies to its young graduates. Not at all. The future “master of the markets” had to take a spoonful of poor life.
Here is an incomplete list of places and jobs that J. Soros held and performed immediately after his studies:
- employee of a haberdashery factory;
- traveling salesman in the seaside towns of southern England;
- waiter;
- fruit picker;
- station porter.
According to the investor’s recollections, at that time he lived on a budget of four pounds a week and was even jealous of the cat, which he saw eating herring. Another batch of legends?
But hope for a better life did not leave young George. He persistently sought a position as a financier and believed in his star: “I have always felt like an exceptional person”.
Some sources put forward the version that the quick and successful employment of young Soros was hampered by his nationality and lack of patronage. It’s hard to disagree with the latter, but the reason for refusals based on nationality (for such a profession!) is quite controversial.
Beginning of financial career 1953-1970
Finally, it's done! In 1953, George was accepted into the arbitration department of Singer and Friedlander. My career as a financier has started. The department's office is next to the London Stock Exchange building.
And in 1956, 26-year-old Soros, with a very small amount of money, set out to conquer America. The first stage of making the next American dream come true. Again, as before, his father helped him. Subsequently, J. Soros always emphasized the enormous influence Schwartz/Soros Sr. had on him. And what help!
George is hired by a certain Mayer, a London friend of his father. Mayer owned a small brokerage office on Wall Street. Soros begins international arbitrage trading with a derivative (combined) financial instrument that he personally created. It combined shares, warrants (derivatives, contracts for the purchase of shares) and. Packages of papers were purchased in one country and sold in another. Already his first place of work in New York allowed Soros to conduct international financial transactions.
In 1959, George moved to the position of analyst at Wetheim & Co. However, in 1963, international arbitration became an unprofitable business and Soros stopped doing it. The reason is the introduction by President John F. Kennedy of a number of additional taxes and fees. Here's a tip from one LSE graduate to another.
By 1967, George was heading the research division at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder. The brokerage firm was engaged in trading on European stock exchanges.
In the United States, Soros begins to conduct the first, still “home”, joint investment operations. He invested his own, as well as the funds of friends and acquaintances entrusted to him, in certain financial instruments. The novice investor's goal was an income of half a million dollars, which would allow him to leave his job as a financier and devote himself entirely to philosophy. Now this looks like a real myth.
Finally, in the same 1967, using his weight and influence in Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, George persuades the company's management to establish the First Eagle investment fund. In 1969, Soros was entrusted with the management of Double Eagle, a newly created hedge fund.
Further, according to one version, J. Soros left the leadership of the Eagles as a result of actions by regulatory authorities and created the world famous Quantum- in 1970, together with Jim Rogers. According to other sources, the Quantum fund grew out of Double Eagle. Well, actually, these nuances don’t really matter.
The foundation owes its name to the branch of modern physics - quantum mechanics, the creators of which were Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and a number of other outstanding scientists of the 20th century.
This can sum up the first half of George Soros' life. For forty long years he walked to his heights, which he achieved together with the Quantum Fund. Left behind were the childhood of a Jewish boy in war-torn Europe, the half-starved years in England, and his first experience of working on Wall Street. Ahead lies the battle with the pound and Asian currencies, the dizzying successes of the Quantum Fund, fame and recognition.
Below are the most significant and well-known financial events associated with the name of Soros.
Soros against the pound. "Black and White Wednesday" September 16, 1992
Of course, in first place is the collapse of the British pound in September 1992. This is the most famous and successful operation of Soros and his foundation. Legend of the foreign exchange market.
Brief background to the issue
In March 1979, the Single European System (ESS) was created. Initially it consisted of 8 states. In 1990, Great Britain joined it. A single European currency, the ECU, was introduced. On 01/01/1999 it was replaced by the euro.
Without going into economic details, the main thing for this story is the requirements for mutual exchange rates of the countries participating in the European system. Fluctuations relative to the fixed (central) value on the date of the country’s accession to the EMU should not exceed 2.25% in both directions (with the exception of the Italian lira). Just like that, European style. An EMU member state must strictly keep its currency (from falling, first of all) within the given limits.
What is the task of a currency speculator in this situation? Everything is quite simple. We need to find the currency that is overvalued relative to another. And massive sales will push the rate of the weak currency down. Force the Central Bank, a country under attack by speculators, to spend gold and foreign exchange reserves on the obviously thankless task of keeping the national currency exchange rate within the corridor. This will be especially difficult if the economy is weakened and reserves are limited. An example is the situation in 2014-2015 with the Ukrainian hryvnia and the Russian ruble, which is very clear.
The main thing is to decide on the victim. It is very important not to make a mistake and bet on the right “horse”. The UK, with its overvalued pound and weakened economy, became such a European “weakling” in 1992. Market participants recognized the German mark and the American dollar as strong currencies. The Germans worked on adapting the former GDR. The future of the economy of a united Germany looked more interesting compared to the British one. did not reduce the key discount rate and did not reduce the attractiveness of the brand.
At the end of August 1992, the disposition looked as follows. The pound/mark fell from 2.95 (at the time of Great Britain’s accession to the EMU) over the spring and summer, first to 2.85, and then to 2.79. The lower border of the corridor 2.778 was dangerously close. Speculators “smelled blood.”
George Soros spoke especially disparagingly about technical analysis (all in the same “Alchemy”): “Existing theories of stock market price behavior are surprisingly inconsistent. For the practitioner their value is so insignificant that I am not even fully acquainted with them. The very fact that I managed to do without them speaks for itself.”.
Alchemists work differently...
However, the Chief Alchemist can also find quite specific recommendations for traders.
Enter the game on small volumes. If your calculations are confirmed, increase your position.
Don't try to learn everything about the market. "stupid."
An investor must decide on the level of risk he can accept when opening a position. Especially at the beginning.
Well, actually, there is nothing new here. All this was described back in the first half of the last century. For example, Jesse Lauriston Livermore, who is widely credited with the Wall Street crash of October 1929.
A few more Soros quotes useful for speculators.
“Obviously, life itself can be seen as a series of speculations. And to conduct these speculations successfully, you must balance at least six variables: the initial bet, the size of the bet, the commissions, the volatility of the game itself, the exit point of the game and the duration of the game.”
“I strongly recommend the use of stop orders to protect funds from unwanted price movements. However, determining the protective suspension levels at which stop orders should be placed is a real art.”
With all his love for the theory of reflexivity and following the main principles in investment strategies, George Soros did not shy away from insider trading. At least one such fact is considered legally proven.
A Paris court convicted Soros in 2002 of his use of confidential information in trade. It was about transactions with shares of Societe Generale bank. Soros' income from these securities amounted to $2 million. The fine to be paid according to the court decision is 2.2 million euros. Later, it was reduced to 900 thousand euros. But Soros did not want to pay that amount, or maybe he was saving his reputation, and his decision was to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. However, this court, by four votes to three, upheld the verdict.
If you carefully analyze others, incl. and the operations described here, it seems quite likely that part of the success of a great investor lies in insider knowledge. He is not the first and certainly not the last. And not everything can be tracked and proven...
Conclusion. So who is George Soros?
It was an incredibly long and difficult journey from Gyorgy Schwartz, a teenager from a Jewish family in Nazi-occupied Budapest, to George Soros, one of the largest and most successful financiers of the late twentieth century.
Soros's personal fortune as of September 2012 was estimated at $19 billion.
His figure has outgrown the framework of the “investor workshop”. He is a writer, philosopher, public figure, fighter against totalitarianism and philanthropist. According to Business Week, his charitable donations reach $5 billion.
But in Soros’s charity, many see nothing more than investments, which are ultimately aimed at personal enrichment and satisfaction of their own ambitions. In 1997, the Soros Foundation, which deals with humanitarian issues in Belarus, was expelled from the country.
Soros is a legendary man, woven from black and white tones, who is worshiped and hated.
Soros is a man who does not accept other people's rules. He installs them himself.
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George Soros, whose real name is Djord Schwartz, was born into a family with Jewish roots; his parents were quite wealthy people. Djord was the second child - the Schwartzes were already growing up a boy named Paul. His father, Tivard Schwartz, was a fairly well-known person in narrow circles - a lawyer, a figure in the Jewish community and an Esperantist writer; he was in good standing with many. Tivard visited the front lines of World War II, and also served three years in exile in Siberia, after which he still managed to return to his homeland, Budapest. Mother - Elizabeth Schwartz - devoted all her time to her sons, instilling in them a love of beauty. George especially liked painting, and he was also delighted with foreign languages, which he studied with great pleasure. When the boy was six years old, the whole family changed their last name - since 1936, the Schwartzes were listed as Soros.
Education and first experience
At the age of 17, George emigrated to England with his parents and brother, where he almost immediately entered the London School of Economics. During his three years of study, Soros listened to a huge number of lectures, but he was especially impressed by the readings of Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher. He largely influenced the formation of the future billionaire, and it was he who became the ideological inspirer of Soros to create the so-called open society in the future.
After receiving his diploma, George began looking for work in his specialty. At the same time, he worked part-time at a haberdashery factory, and later as a traveling salesman, driving an old pickup truck and selling various goods to local merchants. Banking did not work out - lack of experience and Jewish roots significantly slowed down the employment process. Luck smiled in 1953 - his compatriot, a Hungarian, helped him get a job at Singer and Friedlander. However, the work turned out to be quite boring and not very profitable, and therefore after just three years Soros resigned from his position.
That same year, the young man moved to America, where his father’s friend helped him settle down and find a suitable job. The latter gave Soros a position in his own brokerage firm, where he was entrusted with international arbitration. A few years later, George managed to open his own business, but the additional tax on foreign investment introduced in 1963 forced him to close his small business. However, George continued to develop in this direction, and already in 1967 he was listed as the head of the research department at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, a company specializing in brokerage services. Some time later, the same company established the Double Eagle fund, which George was asked to head. After holding the position for about four years, in ’73 he, along with Jim Rogers, left the company and founded their own fund, Quantum. Interestingly, to create their brainchild, the partners took funds from Double Eagle investors.
Own business
At Quantum, there was a clear distribution of responsibilities: Rogers, the junior partner, was responsible for the analytical work of the fund, Soros, the senior partner, was responsible for approving the period for making certain transactions. The heyday of the fund fell on the period 1970-1980 - a time when the partners worked together (Rogers left the firm in 1980). During all this time, the organization worked exclusively in profit, and transactions with securities, commodities and currencies made it possible to increase Soros’s fortune to the level of $100 million. However, there were also times of decline, for example, “Black Monday” in 1987, a week after which annual losses were estimated to be at least 10%. In 1988, Stanley Druckenmiller, a talented and promising asset manager, joined the Quantum team at the invitation of Soros. The collaboration lasted until 2000, when Stanley left the organization. It is believed that this period was one of the most productive in the history of the fund's development.
Soros is often cited as one of the culprits behind the fall of the English pound in 1992, and they also say that he earned at least a billion dollars from this. September 16, the day when this happened, was called “Black Wednesday” by analogy with “Black Monday” in 1987, but Soros always preferred to call it “White Wednesday.”
This was followed by an unsuccessful investment in shares of the Russian company Svyazinvest. Having purchased a quarter of the shares worth $1.875 billion, just a year later he called this investment “the worst of his life” - after the crisis of 1998, the company’s shares fell almost in half. In 2004, Soros managed to get rid of Svyazinvest shares, earning only $625 million for them.
Today, the fund that brought Soros wealth and fame does not operate. He announced its closure in 2011 after changes in American legislation related to the financial system. Since then, George Soros has been actively involved in charity work, while not forgetting to increase his own assets.
Charity, politics, fortune
The Open Community hedge fund was created by Soros in 1979. The organization, which supports the development of culture, science, art and other fields of activity, operates in many countries around the world. At one time, Soros actively collaborated with the USSR, and later with Russia, but financial support for the country was stopped in 2003. In Belarus, due to problems with the authorities, the fund forcibly ceased its activities in 1997.
Every year, the entrepreneur’s non-profit projects, including Open Society, are funded in excess of $300 million. All funds are provided from the personal assets of John Soros. By the way, the financial figure’s fortune is estimated at approximately $25.2 billion in 2017. Some financial investors are confident in Soros’ talent and inner instinct, while others claim that insider information is used for profit. Such information, according to them, Soros received from the “powers that be” - persons who had weight in the political and financial circles of the largest countries in the world. Be that as it may, the facts speak for themselves - Soros is today one of the most successful representatives of the global financial market.
George Soros has an active political position. His name was mentioned more than once during the “velvet” revolutions that took place in Europe in the late 90s, he was one of the first to support the Georgian “Rose Revolution” in 2003, and in 2015 he openly called for financial help to Ukraine, after the beginning of the "Revolution of Honor".
Soros is a supporter of laws to legalize marijuana, believing that the ban only gives rise to its illegal trafficking. Over twenty years of active action in this direction, he spent more than 200 million dollars.
Personal life
Today, a successful financier, philanthropist and investor, whose age is “slightly” eighty, is married to Tamiko Bolton, a girl with Asian roots, 40 years younger than himself. This is the billionaire's third marriage, and the list of ex-husbands includes Annalize Witshak and Susan Weber. From his first two marriages, Soros has five children - four sons and a daughter. Some of them followed in their father’s footsteps, going into finance, while others connected their lives with completely different areas of activity.
George Soros (Gyorgy Shoros)
(English: George Soros, Hungarian: Soros György) -
American financier, investor and
philanthropist. Proponent of the theory
open society and opponent
"market fundamentalism".
His activity causes
mixed assessment in different countries
and various circles of society.
short biography
Voluntarily parting with part of his wealth, George Soros
managed to leave a mark in many areas outside the world of finance and in
to some extent even influence the course of history. Investor and speculator
George Soros also managed to become famous both as a philanthropist and as a philosopher.
and as a politician with very liberal views.
George Soros
middle-income family. George's father was a lawyer and publisher. In
times of repression thanks to false documents produced
father, the Soros family escaped Nazi persecution in 1947
successfully emigrated to the UK. At this time Soros was
17 years. Here Soros entered the London School of Economics and
He successfully graduated in three years.
George Soros
found a job 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 offering goods to various
traders in the seaside resorts of Wales. He also managed to work
a waiter in a restaurant, an apple picker and a porter at the station, but
I never gave up hope of getting a job in a bank. Even then he was leading
meticulous accounting of their meager finances. “I started with a week
budget of 4 pounds, then tried to keep it to less than 4 pounds, and
in my diary I kept track of my income and expenses,” recalls
smile of the current billionaire.
After graduating from the London School of Economics George Soros received
place in an investment company. He worked and trained at
arbitration department, which was located very close to the London
stock exchange.
He arrived in the USA in 1956 at the invitation of his father, London
a friend who had his own small brokerage firm on Wall Street.
Career in the USA began with international arbitration, that is, the purchase
securities in one country and selling them in another. After Suetian
crisis, this type of business did not go as well as Soros wanted and he
created a new trading method, calling it internal arbitrage
(separate sale of combined equity securities,
bonds and warrants before they could be officially separated
from each other).
Before Kennedy introduced the additional tax on foreign
investments This type of activity brought in a good income. After that
Soros's business was destroyed overnight and he returned to philosophy. WITH
1963 to 1966 he tries to rewrite his dissertation
started working after business school and returned to writing his
treatise “The Heavy Burden of Consciousness,” but the demanding George Soros did not
was satisfied with his brainchild, because he believed that he simply conveyed
thoughts of his great teacher.
After all, working for Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, where
rose to the post of vice president, George Soros decided that how
He is much more talented as an investor than as a philosopher or top manager.
In 1967, he managed to convince the management of Arnhold & S.Bleichroeder
establish an offshore investment fund, First Eagle, managed by
Soros. In 1969, the company, together with George Soros, established
another fund, this time the Double Eagle hedge fund, to manage
who were also entrusted to George Soros. When regulators
limited Soros' ability to manage funds, he left his
management positions and in 1970 together with Jim Rogers
(Jim Rogers) founded the famous Quantum fund. The Foundation carried out
speculative transactions with securities, as a result of which his
profitability in the first ten years of its existence amounted to 3365%
year. It is to this foundation that Soros owes most of his
a huge fortune.
But since 1997, Soros experienced a “black streak.” Almost everything
investments brought huge losses. Having decided to retire, he closely
took up programs for funding science and the arts. And everything is his
failures began with the acquisition of a controlling stake in the Russian
Svyazinvest company (in 1998 he himself called this investment “the main
the mistake of my life."
George Soros became famous as a talented investor and as one
one of the most generous billionaires along with Carnegie and Rockefeller.
However, most of all he values his intellectual
achievements. From a young age he dreamed of becoming the next Keynes or
Einstein. While studying at the London School of Economics, he studied
finance, but was most interested in philosophy. It's especially
interested in the views of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper,
who, while teaching Soros, taught at the London School
economics and, at least formally, was the mentor of the young
Hungarian emigrant.
Soros used Popper's views to develop the so-called
“theories of market reflexivity”, which he successfully used in
stock exchange game. According to this theory, traders make decisions about
purchases and sales of securities based on expectations of future prices,
and since expectations are a psychological category, they can be influenced
certain information impact. At the same time, the mood and
the expectations of individual market participants are reflected in the character
market transactions, which may distort the impact of fundamental
factors to the market.
Soros confidently states in his books that this philosophical doctrine
turned out to be very useful in the financial market. However, people who
collaborated closely with him, they claim that by accepting investment
decisions, he rather relies on his intuition and gift of financial
foresight rather than his philosophy. His son Robert says: “He
buys when his back starts to hurt, and sells when his back hurts
passes.
Soros is also accused of using insider
information which he receives from high-ranking officials
states and companies. Once he was already noticed in a scandal with
use of such information. In 2002, a Paris court recognized
George Soros guilty of receiving confidential information from
for profit and was sentenced to a fine of 2.2 million euros. By
According to the court, thanks to this information, Soros earned about $2 million.
on shares of the French bank Societe Generale.
Of all the financial transactions that Soros carried out, the most
his currency speculations are known. On “Black Wednesday” September 16
1992 Soros opened a short position on the pound sterling with a volume of
more than $10 billion, earning more than $1.1 billion in one day. As a result
operations of Soros, the Bank of England was forced to carry out a massive
foreign exchange intervention and, ultimately, withdraw the pound sterling from
mechanism for regulating exchange rates of European countries, which led to
an immediate fall in the pound against major currencies. Exactly
from that moment on, Soros began to be referred to in the press as “the man
collapsed the Bank of England."
George Soros carried out risky operations using
loans, doing what they usually don’t do on the market, preferring
more reliable methods. But, apparently, Soros especially enjoys the excitement
exchange game and the opportunity to emerge as a “winner” from a difficult situation,
which he created for himself. George Soros, like his father, loves
danger and risk. He admitted to his biographer that his best year
life began in 1944, when he and his family were in mortal
danger. This year, George Soros saw the threat of execution
forgery of documents, which his father was engaged in, saved the lives of members
his family and many other people, while hundreds of thousands of Jews were
destroyed by the Hitler regime. “I was lucky that my father was from
those who did not act as people usually act, 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 go
at risk. The life lesson I learned during the war was
is that sometimes you can lose everything, even your own life,
if you don’t take risks.”
Becoming rich and powerful people
George Soros
modest in the outward expression of his powerful status. He is not
collects expensive cars, does not buy sports teams and
luxurious castles and other toys that billionaires show off
in front of each other. Soros dresses modestly and eats modestly in his
apartment in New York, where it is simply “comfortable and pleasant for him to live and receive
sometimes guests.” However, by your actions - be it charity
financial or political activity - Soros appears as a person
of divine proportions, a personality who can bring down
national currencies, shape the direction of development of entire
regions. George Soros provides financial support for initiatives to
legalizing marijuana for medical purposes and allowing same-sex
barks He spent more than $23 million supporting 527 bands performing
against the re-election of George Bush for a second term.
However, such a life position fits well into the image
a philosophizing billionaire who feels empowered and empowered
make the world a better place. “I have always felt like an exceptional person,”
- George Soros admits.
Now George Soros lives in the penthouse of one of the skyscrapers in
downtown New York. He arrived in Manhattan about 50 years ago with
with big ambitions and just a couple of dollars in my pocket. Today he
richer and more influential than many states whose flags fly at
The UN headquarters is not far from his current home. However, despite
to this, the walking embodiment of the American dream, the world's first man,
managed to earn 20 billion in one year and became famous
the collapse of the Bank of England, remains a mystery to the whole world in many ways
relationships. His philosophical revelations and thoughts on finance and
economics in numerous books and publications actually in
Once again they convince us of the ambiguity of the figure of George Soros.
Journalists and biographers have never come to a consensus about what
lies the secret of his success, and what motives underlie it
actions.
Based on materials: Wikipedia, ru.wikipedia.org
The material was prepared based on information from open sources
George Soros is an American financier, trader and investor, also famous for his philanthropic activities. Soros's life path gives rise to many doubts and is regarded ambiguously: some talk about 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 Shoros. The future financier was born into a middle-income family of Jewish origin. Father Tivadar Shorosh worked in the legal industry and also tried to publish his own magazine in the little 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. Elizabeth's mother, 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, young Soros liked painting and drawing. In addition, he made great progress in learning foreign languages: in addition to his native Hungarian, he spoke English, German and French. The guy was also interested in sailing, swimming, and tennis. And from a young age, I always beat my friends at Monopoly.
Classmates recall that at school the future financier behaved impudently and defiantly, and loved to participate in fights. At the same time, he has an excellent tongue, and what he believed in, Soros defended almost at the cost of his life. George was an average student, sometimes demonstrating results, sometimes slipping to the level of a C student.
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Soros was less than 10 years old when the brutal and merciless Second World War began. The million-strong community of Hungarian Jews began to live in fear that they would suffer the same fate as their exterminated compatriots from other European countries. The lifestyle of the Soros family has become a constant desire to hide. For weeks they huddled in basements, or, at best, in the basements and attics of the houses of friends who agreed to host them for a few days.
Tivadar Shorosh was engaged in forgery of documents in those days. 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 fall of 1945, when the danger had finally passed, George Soros went back to school. But life in constant fear of extermination by the Nazis left its mark on him: the guy passionately wanted 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 his aunt, who moved to Florida.
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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 picked apples on a farm, or learned the profession of a painter. And in 1949 he entered the London School of Economics, completing his studies in an accelerated format in two years. Soros was formally registered as a student at the school for another year and received his diploma only in 1953.
A diploma from an economics school 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 was necessary to “join” the investment business. My first job in the financial sector was as an intern at Singer & Friedlander Bank. 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 purchasing securities in one country and selling them in another (this is called international arbitrage). When the United States introduced an additional tax on foreign investments in 1963, the financier considered the business not profitable enough and closed it.
A few years later, Soros worked as the head of research at the brokerage company Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, and a couple of years later he became the manager of the Double Eagle fund, which was founded by this company. 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.
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The Quantum fund specialized in speculation in currencies, securities, and commodities. By the end of the 1980s, George Soros's fortune had already exceeded one hundred million dollars. Over a long period of time, the Soros and Rogers fund was successful, but it also had unsuccessful periods. For example, during “Black Monday” in 1987, when one of the largest stock market crashes in the history of mankind occurred, George ordered the closing of existing positions and withdrawal into cash. Before this decision, the fund’s annual profit level reached 60%, but after this, Quantum not only lost profitability, but also went negative: in annual terms, the loss rate was 10%.
Soon, Soros decided to involve the titled asset manager Stanley Druckenmiller in the work of the fund, with the help of whom the financier managed to further increase his wealth. Stanley worked at Quantum until 2000.
An important date for George was September 16, 1992, when the pound sterling collapsed. The businessman earned over a billion dollars from this event, and Soros is often called one of the culprits of this collapse.
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At the end of the 1990s, the billionaire spoke warmly about Russia and even decided to do joint business with an entrepreneur. Together with him, he acquired a quarter of the shares of Svyazinvest OJSC, which depreciated by half after the 1998 crisis broke out. Subsequently, George Soros called this acquisition the worst investment.
As a financier ages, he becomes less and less interested in investing and trading on the stock exchange and spends more time on charity. In 2011, he announced that his investment fund would cease operations. Since then, Soros has been engaged in financial transactions only to increase his own capital and increase the well-being of his own family.
Fund
George Soros's hedge fund, Open Society, was founded in 1979. The billionaire's funds have been created in several dozen countries. Including his organization (the Soviet-American Cultural Initiative Foundation) worked in the USSR. It was founded to support culture, science and education, but was closed due to high levels of corruption.
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At the end of the twentieth century, the Soros Foundation spent about one hundred million dollars on the Russian project “University Internet Centers,” thanks to which 33 universities had what were then high-tech Internet centers. For many years, the Open Society Institute provided grants to members of the cultural and scientific community, but 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 still operate to this day.
State
In 2017, George Soros's fortune was estimated at $25.2 billion. Some investors believe that he is endowed with an incredible gift of financial foresight, while others see the reasons for his success in the use of secret inside information.
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The billionaire himself developed a theory of stock market reflexivity, 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”, “The Bubble of American Supremacy” and others.
Personal life
George Soros's first wife is Annalize Witshak, 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 was an art critic in New York. This family existed for 22 years.
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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 the separation she sued him. The woman demanded that the investor pay her $50 million as compensation for harassment, moral damages and battery.
In modern photos of George Soros, you can see that this man, despite his advanced age, is still ready to lead an active life. A clear proof of this is the story of his new marriage: in 2013, George tied the knot with 42-year-old dietary supplement saleswoman and yoga specialist Tamiko Bolton. The wedding took place at the Karamoor Music and Arts Center and was attended by 500 people.
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From his first two marriages, the billionaire has five children: sons Alexander, Jonathan, Gregory and Robert, and daughter Andrea. Some children followed in the footsteps of their financier father: Jonathan first worked in his investment fund, and then founded his own company.
George Soros now
The biography of George Soros has many times become the basis for gossip and gossip. For example, in the fall of 2016 there was a rumor that the billionaire had died. In the same year, Ukraine reported about the financier’s secret visit: 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.