George Soros biography. Billionaire George Soros: how he achieved success and became richer than some countries

On the night of August 12, 2012, George Soros celebrated his 82nd birthday with 40-year-old Tamiko Bolton. The fiancee of a prominent investor, who previously sold nutritional supplements online, now owns a company offering online yoga classes.

American financier, founder and head of charitable foundations George Soros (real name Gyorgy Shoros) was born on August 12, 1930 in Budapest (Hungary) into a middle-income Jewish family. George's father was a lawyer and publisher. In 1914, he volunteered for the front, was captured by the Russians and was exiled to Siberia, from where he fled back to his native Budapest.

During World War II, thanks to false documents prepared by his father, the Soros family escaped persecution by the Nazis and emigrated to Great Britain in 1947. At this time, George Soros was already 17 years old. He entered the London School of Economics and successfully graduated after three years. During his studies, he was particularly influenced by the philosophy of Karl Popper and the economic theory of John Maynard Keynes.

In England, he found work in a haberdashery factory, where he began working as a salesman. Then he got a job as a traveling salesman, offering goods to various merchants at the seaside resorts of Wales. In 1953, Soros 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. Its leader traded shares of gold mining companies.

In 1956, Soros arrived in the United States at the invitation of the father of his London friend, who had his own small brokerage firm on Wall Street. Soros' career in the United States began with international arbitrage, that is, buying securities in one country and selling them in another. After the Suez crisis, this type of business did not go as well as Soros wanted, and he created a new method of trading, calling it "internal arbitrage" (selling separately combined securities of stocks, bonds and warrants before they could be officially separated from each other). friend). Before President Kennedy introduced an additional tax on foreign investment, this type of activity brought Soros a good income. But after that everything went downhill, so this type He also had to leave his business.

From 1963 to 1966, Soros tried to rewrite the dissertation he began working on after business school, and returned to writing his treatise, The Heavy Burden of Consciousness, but was not satisfied with the result. This ended the career of Soros as a philosopher, and he returned to business.

In 1966, Soros created his first investment fund with a total capital of $4 million. Over the three years of the investment fund's existence, George Soros received significant profits. In 1969, Soros became the head of the Double Eagle Foundation, which later grew into the Quantum Group. By the mid-1990s, the fund's capital was already $10 billion.

On September 15, 1992, a day that went down in history as “Black Wednesday,” George Soros earned about a billion dollars. He undertook a number of operations that were associated with the rapid fall of the English pound. It was after this fraud that the nickname “The Man Who Collapsed the Bank of England” firmly stuck to Soros.

George Soros made all his money by short-selling. Soros' main tactic is the theory of reflexivity of stock markets. According to this tactic, all trading decisions are made by the speculator based on expectations of future prices.

Some experts believe that Soros owes his success to the gift of financial foresight. According to another version, Soros receives insider information from high-ranking intelligence, political and financial circles of the largest countries in the world. In 2002, he was found guilty by a Paris court of receiving confidential information and sentenced to a fine of 2.2 million euros. The court found that due to the fact that Soros owned confidential information, he was able to earn more than $2 million from shares of the French bank Societe Generale.

In 1979, George Soros became active in philanthropy. In New York, he founded his first foundation, the Open Society Foundation. That same year he set up a fund to support black students at the University of Cape Town in apartheid-ravaged South Africa. Soros's first Eastern European foundation was founded in Hungary in 1984.

In 1987, he launched an initiative to help open society in Russia. In addition to the foundations he founded throughout the former Soviet Union, Soros created the International Science Foundation (ISF) in 1992 to help scientists in Russia and the former Soviet bloc survive the transition without stopping their research or emigrating to other countries. By distributing more than $115 million through the ISF, Soros played a significant role in reducing brain drain and preventing Russia's intellectual and scientific resources from being used for destructive purposes.

In 1990, on the initiative of Soros, the Central European University was founded in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw.

The network of philanthropic organizations founded by Soros operates in more than 50 countries around the world. Located mainly in Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the United States, these funds are intended to create and maintain the infrastructure and institutions of an open society.
Every year, George Soros's network of foundations spends hundreds of millions of dollars to support certain categories of citizens and even entire states.

George Soros is the President and Chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, a private investment management firm, and the general advisor to the Quantum Group of Funds, a number of international investment companies. In July 2000, Soros merged his flagship Quantum Fund with the Quantum Emerging Growth Fund to form the Quantum Endowment Fund.

Soros is known not only as a financier and philanthropist, but also as a social thinker, for whom the establishment of an open society in the post-communist world is a fundamental value and central idea.

In addition to numerous articles, he wrote a number of books, including “The Alchemy of Finance” (1987), “Discovering Soviet system"(1990), "Supporting Democracy" (1991), "Guaranteeing Democracy" (1991), "Soros on Soros" (1995, Russian translation, 1997), "George Soros on Globalization" (2002); "The Bubble of the American excellence" (2005); "A New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The 2008 Credit Crisis and Its Implications" (2009); "Financial Crisis in Europe and the United States" (2012).

His articles and essays on politics, society and economics are regularly published in national press and magazines around the world.
Soros actively interferes in politics. In addition to participating in public life USA, he supported the opposition in Georgia, Ukraine and a number of other countries.

George Soros received honorary degrees from The New School social research, Oxford University, University of Economics in Budapest, Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to support open societies around the world.

George Soros has been married twice. He divorced his first wife, Annalize Witshak, in 1983 after 23 years of marriage. That same year, he married Susan Weber, an art critic from New York who was 25 years younger than the businessman. The couple spent 22 years together. George Soros has five children from two marriages. In 2011, his second son Jonathan left his father's investment fund and opened his own company.

For more than five years, the financier's companion was the Brazilian TV star Adriana Ferreira.

In August 2011, she sued the billionaire. She accused Soros of breaking promises and violence.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

If you are an experienced and active investor or just starting out in this role, then you simply need to know who George Soros is. Since this person is an Investor with capital letters. By studying his life experience, you will gain a lot of new and very useful information for your investment activities.

Every sphere of human life has its own legendary personalities. These are individuals who became famous for their great achievements, discoveries and other actions that changed the world. If you are interested in the history of the world of finance, you will definitely come across the name of George Soros. This is a controversial figure who has become a subject of imitation, in some cases of censure, but much more often of admiration. Who is George Soros and what is the alchemy of his finances, you can find out in this article.

Today D. Soros is the most famous billionaire, investor and philanthropist. This is how his personality is characterized today. But not everyone knows how this figure appeared on the pages of world history.

As Wikipedia says, he is considered an adherent of the theory of an open society and, at the same time, an opponent of the theory of “market fundamentalism.” Soros is known not only as a financial genius who has earned billions, not only as an investor, but also as the creator of the charitable organization “Soros Foundation.” Also, D. Soros occupies an honorable place on the executive committee of the International CrisisGroup agency.

George's activities most often cause ambiguity in assessments. He is often condemned for his impudence in stock market speculation and is remembered as the man who ruined the Bank of England. Using his name, such a financial term as “Soros” was even formed. That is, stock speculators who move very large sums funds and “move” markets in the direction they need. Also, the name of Soros appeared several times in companies aimed at legalizing marijuana in America for medical purposes and other non-standard social programs.

Biography of George Soros and the first steps of formation

The biography of such a person as George Soros is the story of a man who created himself. The path of his formation passed through many obstacles and difficulties. Now he occupies the top of the rankings of the richest people in the world, and in his youth he made money by picking apples in the suburbs of London. His career growth became a role model for tens of thousands of aspiring financiers in every corner of the planet. And, probably, there is no trader who has not at least once in his life met the name surrounded by myths - George Soros. Of course, George appears in the media every now and then as a financial expert and plays the role of an investor or philanthropist in various charitable projects.

Childhood

D. Soros was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1930. George's father earned money from publishing and worked part-time as a lawyer. At the very beginning of World War II, using forged documents independently prepared by George's father, the Soros family, fleeing German repression, left Budapest and moved to the UK. There they were able to settle on the outskirts of the capital, London. From that moment on, George's biography began a new chapter, where the cruel reality of that period of time forced him to quickly grow up.

Soros acquired his primary education in a regular high school, where he studied until he was 17 years old. At that time, George began to become interested in finance and after graduating from school he became a student at the School of Economics in London, where he studied for 3 years. Things weren't going well for his family. Therefore, already at that time, Soros was forced to look for ways to earn money and, without sufficient education, took on any low-paid and not prestigious part-time job, ranging from an apple picker to a dishwasher and a waiter in London pubs.

Youth

After graduating from economics college, George began looking for a real job in his specialty, but all that he was lucky enough to find young specialist- this is the position of an assistant manager in a small haberdashery factory, having received job responsibilities supplying customers with factory products in an old Ford that was dying out.

Of course, this was not the subject of Soros’ dreams, therefore, while working at the factory, George continued to look for work, along with delivering products, visiting banks and investment companies in London. But, as expected, his attempts always ended in nothing.

Only in 1953 was D. Soros able to get a job in the arbitration department of the Singer and Friedlander company, which was located near the London Mercantile Exchange. For three whole years, the growing investor and future billionaire George Soros tried, by some miracle, to break through the gray mass of his colleagues and stand out in the eyes of his management. But the company’s board, entrenched in its conservative views, did not want to listen to Soros’ innovative ideas. Therefore, being annoyed, the young stockbroker accepted the offer of his old friend’s father and moved to America, deciding to try his luck on Wall Street.

Soros received a new position from a small broker, where the young alchemist of finance began to comprehend the art of international arbitration, or more precisely, to resell the securities he bought to the end buyers of the stock market. George's work results and his authority began to rise quickly. But climbing career ladder interrupted by the Suet crisis, which broke the tactics of arbitrage operations with securities used by his company.

Maturity

But it was precisely this fact that changed Soros’s life in better side. By inventing a new strategy, George demonstrated his potential to his management and non-standard way thinking. “Internal arbitrage,” which Soros came up with, allowed the company in which he worked not only to stay afloat, but also to quickly become a leader on Wall Street.

After some time, John Kennedy imposed additional taxes on foreign investment, making George's tactics low-profit. However, having gained experience, skills and earned a certain authority in stock exchange circles, George decided to leave the company where he worked and began writing a dissertation that had remained unfinished since the days of the London School of Economics.

Most likely, this was a stage in life when George, who had matured in his worldviews, tried to comprehend the experience he had received and find the most optimal way for your further climb up the career ladder.

From theory to practice

Soros returned to the stock exchange world in 1966. And George’s new company was the Double Egle exchange-traded fund, to which Soros came with his savings and $100 thousand borrowed from his comrades. It's time to show your theoretical developments in practice! Few people associate the period of Soros’s successes with this period of biography, although it is from this point that George’s biography begins to become the most interesting. Having taken the place of executive director of the fund, George Soros began to actively implement his financial philosophy.

A new stage in George S.'s growth was the creation in 1970 of his own exchange-traded fund, Quantum. It was this hedge fund that became a springboard for George to universal recognition. Over the ten years of its operation, the fund was able to earn a huge fortune, annually bringing its creator more than 3000% of profits. This dynamic could not have gone unnoticed by America's elite financial circles, which now welcomed him with open arms.

Then, for a couple of decades, this investor continued to engage in stock market speculation, creating hedge funds in specialized financial markets. And the luck that accompanied him allowed him to increase his capital by two or three times, which had already grown to global proportions.

Like any other figure in the world of finance, not all of George Soros's moves brought only profit. It is human nature to make mistakes, which is why D. Soros’ financial alchemy sometimes failed. In 1997, he made a mistake and connected one of the areas of his business with a company from Russia - Svyazinvest, which soon went bankrupt. As a result, George Soros lost a fairly decent part of his capital (exactly how much history is silent). This situation is exactly the fly in the ointment that shows that in real life any success is associated with a certain share of defeats, and in the financial market making a profit without losing trades is impossible!

Patronage and charity

However, D. Soros achieved fame not only in connection with the success of his hedge operations. Soros is also known as a philanthropist whose generosity knows no bounds. Its investments in scientific fields and culture are regular and large-scale. He is a frequent visitor to various kinds scientific and cultural events and conferences, donates money to orphanages and schools. Several educational programs operate under its auspices.

In the never-ending process of profit-making, Soros has not lost human face and, unlike the overwhelming number of personalities from the Forbes rating, in many respects remained an ordinary person, who is not alien to compassion and pity.

Books by D. Soros

It is impossible not to mention the book “Alchemy of Finance”, in which George Soros outlined the entire algorithm for his success. you can in the library of our portal!

The Alchemy of Finance will take you into the world of this world-famous investor and philanthropist, make you think as he does, and allow you to learn from the experiences that make him what he is today - one of the most popular figures. world of big money. His career is truly alchemy!

Child scientific activity D. Soros is a treatise written by him on “reflexivity of markets”, which has been interpreted into reality by more than one generation of successful traders. According to Soros, all decisions in the financial market are the result of internal beliefs that relate to the future dynamics of the movement of quotes. And based on the fact that almost all human beliefs are often a psychological aspect, this means that people can be purposefully influenced through the media, rumors and verbal interventions. In simple words– the market is a completely controllable mechanism, and in order to change the course of its movement, and even more so to influence the work of the company, even a rumor is enough. And, accordingly, according to Soros, all this can be converted into money.

Problems with the law

Hence Soros' problems with the law. Soros has used theoretical developments in crowd control many times in reality. And several times he was officially accused of using insider information. His connections are extensive. Having become a friend, comrade, idol and favorite of many high-ranking officials, it was not difficult for George to be one of the first to learn insider information, which he immediately turned into money. On the other hand, you must admit that anyone in his place would have acted exactly as he did. Having received “closed” data that can be used in their own interests on the stock exchange, any investor or trader will rush to use it in their own interests. This is a business where almost any method is used to achieve goals. The world of money has never been “clean”...

In 2002, a trial was launched against D. Soros and other well-known stock exchange figures in Paris, and as a result, George was fined € 2.25 million for insider fraud with the securities of the French bank Societe Generale.

Also, this famous investor was involved in several other high-profile frauds on the securities market, but the regulatory authorities and courts failed to prove his guilt.

Black Wednesday

But these are not the most basic scandalous situations in which George Soros was a participant. Once, this world-famous schemer brought down the British pound, so much so that this day in the history of financial markets was called “Black Wednesday”.

On September 16, 1992, George opened a deal to sell the British currency in the amount of $10 billion, causing a significant collapse in the value of the British currency. Soros came to the aid of the theory of “reflexive markets” he invented, which in practice caused a wave of massive sales of the pound sterling by other trading participants. The UK currency fell by 1,000 p/p in a matter of hours. For 1992, a currency drop of 1000 points was something out of science fiction. The Bank of England even had to urgently intervene in the situation through large-scale foreign exchange interventions, and remove the pound sterling itself from the list of exchange currencies, since its collapse could drag down the EU currency as well.

Then Soros, in just a few hours, was able to earn about $1 billion and his place in the world history of finance.

Yes, on the one hand, this act is subject to censure, since, in pursuing his personal financial interests, investor George neglected the fact that his actions would cause financial harm to others, in particular the Bank of England and Great Britain itself. On the other hand, we all know one simple rule: in the financial market, the profits of some participants are the losses of others. This is how the world of finance is built. This means that George Soros’ actions do not go beyond established standards and differ from other speculations only in their scale.

That is why the story described above in to a greater extent is perceived as a fact in history, when one person did the almost impossible. However, “doing the impossible” can be attributed to the entire biography of George Soros, who grew from an apple picker to 23rd place in the world ranking of the richest people by the popular Forbes publication.

Conclusion

Of course, besides George Soros, in the world of finance you can find not a single dozen famous people who were able to reach even greater heights of popularity and fame than him. But Soros is definitely one of those who stands out from total mass billionaires. This was helped by his image of a “financial hooligan” and “Robin Hood”, who was in a hurry to share everything he earned with other, more needy people.

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

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

Principles of George Soros

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

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

Thanks to the difficulties that befell his family, he developed the following life principles:

• “My principle is to strive to survive first and make money second.”
• “I did not accept the rules proposed by others. If I did this, I would no longer live.”

In London

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

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

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

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

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

Start of financial activity

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

And here he follows another one of his life principle: “I don’t play within a given set of rules, I strive to change the rules of the game.”

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

Creation of the Quantum Fund

Since 1966, the investment activity of George Soros began. The capital of the company he founded initially amounts to 100 thousand dollars. Over the course of three years of work, he makes a significant profit and becomes a co-owner and director of the Double Eagle fund, which later grew into (named after the creator of quantum mechanics).

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

Nevertheless, Quantum provided its investors with an annual return of over 30% on shares, and in total they received $32 billion - this is the largest profit in the entire history of hedge funds. And Quantum’s capital by 1990 was already $10 billion.

"White Wednesday"

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

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

For several years, Soros bought British currency in small quantities. In addition, he approached the largest American investment banks with his idea for financial support. Having the appropriate capital, Soros began to play to reduce the English pound - to short. Selling 5 billion British pounds at once made it possible to reduce the exchange rate of the pound to a critical minimum, and the repurchase of pounds that had fallen in price made it possible to make a profit of 1 billion.

Failures

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

Later he had other failures, albeit on a smaller scale, so he decided to start financing scientific and cultural projects.

Charity

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

Strategy for making a profit from Soros

It is known that Soros managed to earn significant profits using the so-called “bearish” tactics (playing short).

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

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

For example, in 2002, a Paris court found him guilty of using confidential information for profit, thanks to which he earned $2 million from shares in a large French bank, and sentenced him to a corresponding fine.

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

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

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

We continue to publish articles about success stories famous people. George Soros- without a doubt a well-known financier and investor. At the time of publication of this article, he also became involved in charity work. George Soros is known not only as an investor (like ), but also as a speculator. There are ambivalent attitudes towards George Soros around the world. But everyone agrees that he is an extraordinary and interesting person.

George Soros was born on August 12, 1930 into a Jewish family in Budapest. Father Tivadar Soros (Shorosh) was a lawyer and tried to get into the publishing business. Soros's father fought in World War I against Russia and was captured by the Russians, ending up spending three years in camps. This is probably the reason that his son George Soros does not like Russia and Russians. This follows from numerous media publications.

J. Soros was a talented child and learned not only his native Hungarian, but also German, English and French languages. Soros also enjoyed sports as a child and played Capital (this is a variation on the theme of the game Monopoly). Classmates remembered George Soros as a man with a tough, aggressive and domineering character.

In the second world war Soros's father was involved in forging documents, which saved many Jews from death. Those who did nothing were in greater danger than those who took the risk of falsifying documents. Soros Jr. learned this life lesson. As he says: sometimes you can lose everything, including your own life, if you don’t take risks.

After World War II, George Soros moved to England, where he worked as a waiter. It also happened that he finished the food for the guests, because... I was completely broke. George Soros spent the post-war years in poverty and doing odd jobs. For example, I worked picking apples and also painted something there.

1949 George enters the London School of Economics, where he listened to lectures by very talented teachers. As a result, Soros became not only interested in economics, but also in philosophy. In particular, he was interested in the book “The Open Society and Its Enemies.” According to the future billionaire, philosophy, paradoxical as it may sound, can really help you make money.

At the age of 22, Soros received a diploma in economics, and this did not help him much in moving up the career ladder. Nevertheless, he sent his resume to a number of investment companies and in one of them Soros was offered an intern position. It was there that Soros got a taste for stock trading. Subsequently, the young investment banker moved to New York, where he got a job at an investment firm and began to engage in foreign exchange trading.

In 1963, Soros went to work for the company Arnold & Blackhreder, a leading American firm for instictions abroad. This is where J. Soros’s knowledge of several European languages ​​and connections in the Old World came in handy.

Previously, it was believed that economic phenomena were objective in nature. However, according to George Soros, if we consider economics a science, we must be objective. So, the participants in economic processes (people, households and firms - they all do not always behave rationally. Therefore, Soros understood that our opinions about stock markets and financial markets have little in common with what is actually happening there.

Soon, George Soros, with the support of Arnold & Blackhreder, established an offshore investment fund and entrusted the management of this fund to Soros. He understood that she was much better at investing than working among senior management. Subsequently, Soros invested both his personal money and the money of many of his clients through offshore companies. Offshore funds allowed tax evasion.

In the early seventies, things weren't going well for many of the wolves of Wall Street. At the same time, George Soros was an exception to the rule and his investments sometimes rose in price by tens of percent per year. George Soros bought shares of companies from Europe and Asia and tried to acquire real business pearls for pennies. Soros also became famous for collapsing the English pound sterling. It is unclear what was the cause and what was the effect. In any case, we know for sure that Soros sold British pounds on the eve of the collapse of this currency. Along with the talented financier, his investors also rapidly grew rich. By 1980, Soros's fund had never closed a year with losses for 12 years in a row without exception, and in 1980 his fund showed a growth rate of 102% per annum. But later there were also unsuccessful years. In the 80s, Soros became more active in speculation, influencing the dynamics of markets, as well as the exchange rates of entire countries, because the size of managed funds has already become significant. Soros made a lot of money from these fluctuations in stock prices and currencies.

Soros' talent is hard to deny. For example, there was a publication in the press that in 1993 alone, George Soros earned more money than McDonald's, which at that time had 169 thousand employees. Financial World writes that Soros made the most money on Wall Street that year.

The secret of George Soros' success

Analysts believe that one of the main reasons for the success of George Soros was his excellent and sharp mind. He sees cause-and-effect relationships well and is therefore able to make forecasts in the markets and use this knowledge.

Another important quality of George Soros is the ability to quickly make tough decisions. Active risk management in a dynamically changing situation requires determination and does not require much thought. At the same time work in progress with huge sums. According to many financiers, to work with such huge money you need to have balls of iron.

At the same time, Soros’s temperament is such that if he makes a mistake, he does not lose his mind, but remains sober, knows how to admit his mistake and exit the game in time, recording losses.

Those who worked for Soros say that he has very developed intuition. I think that this intuition developed with experience in the market for decades. Also, many say that George Soros is characterized by self-discipline, as well as an understanding that markets are affected by both objective and subjective factors.

It is also possible that one of the reasons for the success of a talented investor was his social circle - state leaders who, when communicating, could provide valuable information for investment.

In 1997, Soros made a mistake with the Russian stock market. Investments in the Russian Svyazinvest on the eve of the financial collapse in Russia for almost two billion dollars became a serious mistake. Then there were serious miscalculations regarding the dot-com bubble. Ultimately, Soros decided that he had lost his instincts and moved away from actively managing large deals.

George Soros and charity

Soros is known as a person who is actively involved in charity work. And the first charitable foundation dates back to 1979. For a long time, Soros was also involved in charity work, including in Russia. Some people believe that charitable activities in Russia are a cover for some kind of espionage, or that the opposition was financed in this way in the past. There are similar opinions regarding Soros funds from residents of other countries.

Is George Soros an enemy of Russia?

Soros is also accused of exporting scientific developments created during the USSR to Russia under the guise of charitable activities and contributing to the so-called brain drain. Soros himself does not deny that he purposefully financed forces directed against the Soviet state. For some reason, Soros is against the current political system Russia. Perhaps the reason is that his father was held captive in Russia for several years or perhaps he truly believes in an "open society".

The bottom line is that Soros is a talented financier and investor, but his activities in relation to Russia raise big questions.

USA Mother Elizabeth Soros[d] Spouse Tamiko Bolton[d]

His activities are controversial different countries and various circles of society. Soros is often referred to as a financial speculator, “the man who broke the Bank of England”, from whom the term “Soros” is derived to refer to large speculators who trigger currency crises for “profit and pleasure” (Paul Krugman, 1996).

Biography

In 1947, Soros moved to the UK, where he entered the London School of Economics and Political Science and successfully graduated three years later. He was lectured by the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, who had a great influence on him and whose ideological follower he became. In England, he found work in a haberdashery factory, and then became a traveling salesman, but did not give up his search for work in a bank. In 1953 he 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.

Soros's career as a financier dates back to 1956. He arrived in New York 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 trading method, calling it internal arbitration- selling separately combined securities of stocks, bonds and warrants before they could be officially separated from each other. In 1963, Kennedy introduced a foreign investment surcharge and Soros closed his business. By 1967, he served as head of research at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, a well-known brokerage firm specializing in European stock markets.

In 1969, Soros became the manager of the Double Eagle fund, founded by Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder. In 1973, he left Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder and, together with Jim Rogers, based on the assets of investors in the Double Eagle fund, he founded a fund that later became known as Quantum (a term from the field of quantum mechanics). Soros was the senior partner, Rogers was the junior until he retired in 1980. The division of labor between Soros and Rogers in managing the fund was that Rogers did most of the analytical work, but Soros made decisions about when to take trades. The fund carried out speculative operations with securities, currencies, and commodities and achieved great success over the period of collaboration from 1970 to 1980, Soros and Rogers never suffered a loss; by the end of 1980, Soros's personal fortune was estimated at $100 million; in June 1981, Institutional Investor magazine named Soros the world's greatest fund manager. Despite the fund's success over the long term, it had unsuccessful years - if in 1980 the profit was 100%, then the next year the fund lost 23%. Soros' decision on Black Monday in 1987 to close all positions and go into cash was one of the biggest failures of his career. If before “Black Monday” the annual profitability of Quantum was 60%, then a week later the fund became unprofitable, with losses of 10% in annual terms.

In 1988, Soros hired Stanley Druckenmiller to work for his fund, and he played an important role in subsequent investment decisions until 2000, when he left Quantum. It is believed that from the sharp fall of the English pound against the German mark on September 16, 1992, Soros earned more than a billion dollars in a day. Soros began to call this day, known as “Black Wednesday”, “White Wednesday”, and he himself is celebrated as “the man who broke the Bank of England”, although his role in the fall of the pound is clearly exaggerated.

Gradually, Soros is moving away from financial speculation and declaring charitable activities, including in the field of education and scientific research. Makes statements about the need and usefulness of restrictions in financial sector, including to reduce the investment opportunities of large financial structures.

On July 26, 2011, he announced the closure of his investment fund and the return to third-party investors of their investments in the amount of about one billion dollars. Investors were informed about this decision by the head of the fund by a special letter. As Soros announced on the same day, starting next year, he will be engaged in increasing only his personal capital and the funds of his family. Deputy chairmen of the fund's board, Soros' sons Jonathan and Robert, explained that the decision to close the fund is related to changes in American legislation, which are being developed as part of the ongoing financial reform. We are talking about the new Dodd-Frank law, known by the name of its developers - Congressmen Chris Dodd and Barney Frank (eng. Barney Frank), which imposes a number of significant restrictions on hedge funds: until March 2012, all hedge funds operating in the country must be registered with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and hedge funds are also required to disclose all information about their investors, assets, investment policies, as well as possible conflicts of interest.

In September 2013, he married for the third time, his chosen one was 42-year-old Tamiko Bolton. They met five years ago, and in August they announced their engagement.

Video on the topic

Financial activities

There are two main points of view regarding Soros' financial success. According to the first point of view, Soros owes his successes to the gift of financial foresight. Another says that in acceptance important decisions Soros uses insider information provided by high-ranking officials from the political and financial circles of the largest countries in the world.

Soros himself tried to explain the tremendous success by using his theory of stock market reflexivity, according to which 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 any state consists of successive information attacks through the media and custom articles in analytical publications, combined with the real actions of currency speculators, shaking the financial market.

In 2002, a Paris court 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 of the French bank Societe Generale. The fine was subsequently reduced to 0.9 million euros. Soros appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, but in 2011 it did not see any violations in the condemnation, by four votes to three.

Open Society Foundation

At the end of 2003, Soros officially curtailed financial support for his activities in Russia, and in 2004, the Open Society Institute stopped issuing grants. But the structures created with the assistance of the Soros Foundation now operate without its direct participation: Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSHSEN, created in 1995 with a grant from the Soros Foundation), the Foundation for Culture and Art, the International charitable foundation named after D. S. Likhachev, non-profit foundation for the support of book publishing, education and new information technologies “Pushkin Library”.

The activities of the Soros Foundation were discontinued in the Republic of Belarus in 1997.

As of November 2009, George Soros's fortune was estimated at 11 billion dollars, as of September 2012 - 19 billion. According to Business Week magazine estimates, he donated more than $5 billion to charitable causes throughout his life, with one billion of these five billion going to Russia.

In November 2015, the Open Society Foundation was added to the list of “undesirable” NGOs in Russia, making it impossible for them to further work in Russia.

In 2017, the ruling party in Hungary, Fidesz, in particular its leaders, announced that 2017 would be marked by the fact that it would begin with an amendment to the law of 2011, according to which NGO leaders would have to declare their assets.

Political activism and lobbying

In the political field, he proved himself as a sponsor and influential lobbyist. He played an important role in the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe during the “velvet” revolutions of 1989. He also played a prominent role in the preparation and conduct of the Georgian “Rose Revolution” of 2003, although Soros himself claimed that his role was extremely exaggerated by the press.

In the United States, he was very active during the 2004 presidential campaign, because he considered Bush's policies dangerous for the United States and the world. He spent $27 million advocating changes in American politics. However, George W. Bush won the elections in 2004. Since 2005, Soros has helped create and finance the Democratic Alliance. Democracy Alliance) - an organization that unites and guides American progressives within the Democratic Party. Soros supported Hillary Clinton's candidacy in the 2016 US presidential election.

He is considered one of the main sponsors of campaigns for reforms in the legal regulation of drug trafficking, including the movement to legalize marijuana and decriminalize drug use. In his opinion, the legalization of marijuana will simultaneously increase budget revenues and reduce the number of crimes that accompany drug trafficking. From 1994 to 2014, Soros donated about $200 million to support reforms in this industry. The largest recipient of his donations is the Drug Policy Alliance. In 2007, he directed $400,000 to support passage in the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives. act on liberalization and mitigation of penalties for possession and consumption of marijuana), in 2008 this law was adopted. In 2010, Soros donated $1 million to similar initiative in California, however, the referendum ended in its rejection.

At the beginning of January 2015, Soros called for urgent assistance to Ukraine. financial assistance in the amount of 20 billion euros to support the “belligerent side”. German Economic News quotes Soros as saying that “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a direct attack on the EU and its principles”.

On November 12, 2015, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko awarded George Soros with the Order of Freedom. Poroshenko noted the significant role international fund“Revival”, founded by Soros, in the development of the Ukrainian state and the establishment of democracy. In addition, Poroshenko expressed gratitude for the efforts of Soros and his long-term comprehensive plan to support Ukraine, as well as for professional advice on public finance issues.

Essays

• Soros J. Soros about Soros. - M.: Infra-M, 1996. - 336 p. - ISBN 5-86225-305-X.
• Soros J. Alchemy of finance. - M.: Infra-M, 2001. - 208 p. - ISBN 5-86225-166-9.
• Soros George. The bubble of American superiority. Where should American power be directed? / translated from English - M.: Alpina Business Books, 2004, 192 pp., ISBN 5-9614-0042-5 (Russian), ISBN 1-58648-217-3 (English), dash. 10000 copies
• Soros J. Open Society. Reforming global capitalism. Per. from English - M.: Non-profit foundation “Support for culture, education and new information technologies”, 2001. - 458 pp., ISBN 5-94072-001-3, ref. 10000 copies
• Soros J. About globalization. - M.: Eksmo, 2004. - 224 p. - ISBN 5-699-07924-6.
• Soros J."Fund" for Russia. What was, what will be. - M.: Algorithm, 2015. - 224 p. - (Dangerous knowledge). - 2000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-906798-99-2.
• Soros, George."The crisis of world capitalism." (1999).
• Soros, George. New paradigm of financial markets. Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2008.

See also

Notes

1. Internet Movie Database - 1990.
2. Encyclopædia Britannica
3. RKDartists
4. George Soros ties the knot - 2013.
5. crisisgroup.org
6. 1. 19 George Soros Forbes. Retrieved November 11, 2016.
7. Columnist Backs Off Soros Charges
8. Paul Soros (obituary in The New York Times)
9. How George Soros became first an icon and then a laughing stock on Wall Street | Forbes.ru
10. , With. 197.
11. Jack Schwager Stock magicians. M.: Diagram Publishing House, 2004.
12. Robert Slater Soros: The Life, Work and Business Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor. - H., “Folio”, 382 pp., 1996.