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

USA USA Mother Elizabeth Soros[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 was director of research at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, a renowned brokerage company, specializing in European stock markets.

In 1969, Soros became 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 success of the fund in the long term, it had unsuccessful years - if in 1980 the profit was 100%, then 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 invited Stanley Druckenmiller, who played 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 the financial sector, including to reduce the investment opportunities of large financial institutions.

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 financial reform currently underway in the United States. 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 making important decisions Soros uses insider information provided by high-ranking officials from 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-made 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 in 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 Institute Open Society“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 support for 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, which made it impossible for it to continue operating in Russia.

In 2017, the ruling Fidesz party in Hungary, 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.

Notes

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

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

Childhood and youth of George Soros

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emigration to England

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving to New York

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

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

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

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

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

Creation of the first fund, the second...

Before Kennedy introduced an additional tax on foreign investment, this type of activity brought in good income. After this, Soros' business was destroyed overnight, and he returned to philosophy. From 1963 to 1966, he tried to rewrite the dissertation on which he began working after business school and returned to writing his treatise “The Heavy Burden of Consciousness,” but the demanding George Soros was not satisfied with his brainchild, because he believed that he was simply conveying the thoughts of his great teachers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Retire or go into the shadows?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheer nonsense

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

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

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

Richer than forty-two states

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

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

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

Secrets of George Soros' Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Large financial losses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books by George Soros

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

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

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Greetings! Who is George Soros? On the one hand, a famous philanthropist, politician, investor and even philosopher. On the other hand, he is a ruthless speculator, a supporter of the legalization of soft drugs and a sponsor of the opposition in different countries.

Let's meet? George Soros: biography of the man who “brought down the Bank of England.”

George Soros is not the billionaire's real name. At birth he was named Gyorgy Schwartz. The legendary investor was unlucky three times: he was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in the mid-1930s.

During the Nazi occupation, the family survived only thanks to George's father, a lawyer and Esperanto specialist. He forged documents for the entire family, changing the Jewish surname to the Hungarian one.

In 1947, Soros ended up in Great Britain, where he successfully graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His idol was the Austrian lecturer, philosopher and anti-communist Karl Popper with his concept of an “open society”. The main message of the theory: in an open society, people make decisions using intelligence and critical thinking.

After graduation, the future billionaire “searches for himself” for some time. In his youth, he managed to work as a traveling salesman, a waiter in a restaurant, an apple picker, a station porter and an assistant manager at a haberdashery factory.

Unfortunately, getting a job in the financial sector without patrons (and even as a Jew) was almost impossible at that time.

Starting a financial career

In 1956, a friend of his father invited Soros to move to the United States. There, young George learns the secrets of buying and selling securities at a Wall Street brokerage firm.

Even then, Soros did not like to work according to a well-established scheme. He comes up with new way trade – internal arbitrage. The bottom line: sell separately securities from a package of bonds, powers of attorney and shares before they are officially divided.

Around the same time, George created his own theory: “market reflection,” which he later described more than once in his books. The main idea: the future price of any asset depends not only on political and economic changes, but also on the psychology of the crowd.

The day when any currency “dies” can be organized artificially. You just need to wisely use the world media and put pressure on analysts and traders. Looking ahead, I will say that Soros subsequently applied the theory of “market reflection” in practice. The financial crises it caused destroyed the lives of thousands of people and seriously affected the economies of individual countries.

In 1970, the legendary hedge fund Quantum was born. George Soros co-founded it with Jim Rogers. What does the foundation do? Attracts funds from a narrow circle of people and invests them in highly profitable assets.

Quantum's history resembles a cardiogram with sharp ups and downs. But overall, the fund's performance is impressive. Quantum investors earned about $32 billion on investments in the fund. By the way, this is a confident first place in profit in the entire history of hedge funds.

The Legend of Black Wednesday

I'll start from afar. In October 1990, Soros met Stanley Druckenmiller, a fund manager on Wall Street. Despite the fact that the age difference is 30 years, the financiers became friends. Two years later, 32-year-old Stanley Druckenmiller headed the legendary Quantum Fund.

How did Soros and his friend collapse the pound? In the early 90s, both of them bought government bonds and British currency a little at a time. In the autumn of 1992, the pound fell steadily throughout the week. Friends and speculators decided to make money on this. To the fund's money, Soros added a personal capital of 5 billion pounds. And he took a short position totaling more than 10 billion pounds.

The British currency immediately fell to its lowest level. Having bought a pound at the lowest price, Soros earned more than one billion from the deal! An impressive premium for the collapse of the currency of the largest European country.

With his speculation, George forced the Bank of England to make a large foreign exchange injection from government reserves. And he removed the pound from the mechanism for regulating European currencies.

In 1993, Soros again became famous throughout the world. He was recognized as the most successful investor in the investment market. In one year, Soros earned an amount equal to the GDP of 43 countries or income largest corporation McDonald's.

In 1997, Soros decided to repeat the “British crash” in South Asia by attacking the currencies of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. Financial panic in Asian markets provoked a deep economic crisis. The Prime Minister of Malaysia directly accused Soros of destabilizing the country. As a result of the attack, the Malaysian economy was thrown back 15 years and has struggled to recover from the blow.

During his financial career, George Soros made a lot of dubious deals. For example, I purchased MGM shares with a limit of $1.35 million. Until a certain price was reached, the deal was closed automatically. Soros bought the shares 60 days before the massacre at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.

Catastrophic mistakes of the speculator

George Soros' biggest financial failure involves Russia. In 1997, together with Russian oligarch Potanin creates the offshore Mustcom and through it buys 25% of the shares of the Svyazinvest company.

And in 1998, a default broke out in Russia. Prices for everything fell three times. The legendary speculator lost $1.25 billion on the purchase and sale of Svyazinvest.

The “Russian failure” was Soros’s first major failure. Others followed her. In 1999, George confidently predicted the fall in the assets of Internet companies - and lost $700 million on this. A little later, a speculator mistakenly bet on the growth of the euro - and became poorer by another $300 million.

Soros's total loss for 1999 exceeded $1.5 billion. Clients began to massively withdraw their investments from the funds. For so many years, this was the most crushing blow to the reputation of the legendary speculator. But Soros managed to stop the process. He was even able to attract new investors by investing in the same Internet companies, but this time, playing for bulls. By 2000, Quantum Fund's turnover had grown to $10.5 billion.

However, unexpectedly for everyone, the NASDAQ index fell seriously. In April 2000, the Soros fund lost $5 billion - 2.5 times more than in 1999. In 2004, the billionaire liquidated the fund. And in 2011 he officially “retired”, having completed 40 years of work in the field of hedge fund management. From this moment on, the legendary speculator and philanthropist deals only with personal projects and manages exclusively family capital.

However, according to the results of 2012, Soros ranks 30th in the list of the richest people in the world (with a fortune of $19.2 billion).

P.S. My favorite quote from George Soros: “Success requires leisure—time that is entirely yours.”

Billionaire George Soros is known as a successful investor, philanthropist and writer. He is one of the most famous financial speculators of the 20th century, the founder of several hedge funds and the international charity Open Society.

Brief information:

FULL NAME: George Soros (Schwartz)
Date of Birth: 08/12/1930
Education: higher education
Date of start of business/age: 1963/33 years
Type of activity at start: investor
Current activity: charity
Current status:$8 billion (according to Forbes magazine)

George Soros is one of famous financiers, speculators and political lobbyists of our time. During his work, he influenced the development of international political processes, founded a business and several funds operating around the world, and became famous for successful high-risk investments.

Brief biography of George Soros

American financier Jewish nationality born in the capital of Hungary on August 12, 1930. Real name George Soros (György Soros) - Schwartz. He was brought up in a middle-income family.

His parents taught important life lessons and played an important role in short biography George Soros:

Mother Elizabeth taught her son to be creative and awakened his love for music and drawing. Thanks to his out-of-the-box thinking, George (Gyorgy in Hungarian) achieved success: he knew how to see, take advantage of new opportunities;
Tivadar's father was a lawyer who was exiled in Siberia during the First World War. When Hungary was under Nazi occupation, he was engaged in forging documents, thus saving members of the Jewish diaspora in Budapest.

Statement. My father was not afraid to take risks. The life lesson I learned during the war is that sometimes you can lose everything, even your own life, if you don’t take risks.

It was this idea that became the key to the success story of George Soros as a fantastically successful investor.

His sharp mind and ability to think outside the box allowed him to learn 4 languages: English, German, French and, naturally, Hungarian.

For most of World War II, he hid in basements, attics and other nooks and crannies to avoid being found by Nazi soldiers. At that time, the largest Jewish community in Eastern Europe lived in Hungary, and the German occupation forces were especially eager to look for people of this nationality here.

Through the efforts of his father, George emigrated to the UK in 1944. A year later, after the victory of the USSR and allies in the war, he returned back and even returned to school. But even then the idea of settling in the West and achieving great success had matured in him.

In 1947, at the age of 17, Soros left his native Hungary alone. First he stopped in Switzerland, then in the capital of England, London. Here the money his father gave him ran out. The future billionaire had to get by with temporary and odd jobs: as a waiter in a high-status restaurant, an apple picker on a farm, and even a painter.

In 1949 he entered the London School of Economics and graduated in two years. At the same time, I became acquainted with the philosophical book “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, became imbued with the ideas and wanted to put them into practice and make capital on it. Soros was very attracted to the investment business.

In the early 50s, he got a job as an intern at the Singer and Friedlander bank, where he dealt with shares of various companies, in particular gold mining. George made money by buying and reselling securities. He really enjoyed working in the money markets, even though he was not very successful at first.

In 1956, having earned some money, he went to the United States, determined to achieve success in the investment business.

Work in New York

Soros was helped to find a job in the business center of the United States by one of his colleagues from London, who recommended him to the investment firm of F. Mayer. Soon the young businessman became involved in currency arbitrage.

Having gained experience and made acquaintances, in 1963 he moved to large company"Arnhold&S.Bleichroeder", engaged in investing in foreign markets. Given good experience, dating in Old Europe and knowledge foreign languages, George was hired as a priority.

The investor was of the opinion that the economy, despite clear laws, is essentially subjective, since behind it there are people with their own characteristics.

Quote. Facts and opinions do not exist independently of each other. And opinions change facts.

In the 60s there was no Internet and such rapid exchange of information and news. The entrepreneur admits that sometimes for subsequent calculations he set the indicators he needed - no one could check whether they were true.

All businessmen try to take into account future events, risks and opportunities. Soros played on this, speculating on valuable information.

Creation of offshore funds

In 1967, a successful investor convinced his company's management to create several independent funds and provide the opportunity to manage their activities. As a result, by 1969, Soros had two funds under his control: First Eagle, Double Eagle and $250 thousand of his own funds.

Figure 1. George Soros, photo shoot.
Source: rinf.com

Through his friends he was able to raise another $6 million, and a little later - funds from wealthy Arabs and Latin Americans. No taxes were levied on the collected capital, since the funds were registered offshore.

George invested skillfully, buying shares in businesses in Canada, France, Holland and Japan. In the 1970s, during a structural economic crisis, unlike many other players, the entrepreneur only benefited:

for 5 years until 1974, the securities of the Double Eagle fund tripled to $18 million;
in 1976-77 the value of the fund increased by almost 100%. For comparison, the Dow Jones index fell 13% at that time.

In 1979, the fund changed its name from Double Eagle to Quantum. At the same time, he was able to earn $100 million from the fall of the English pound sterling. English state the bonds were in great demand, Soros bought them for $1 billion and then suddenly sold them. And very soon the pound exchange rate seriously collapsed.

By the early 1980s, over a 10-year period, the value of the Quantum hedge fund (Double Eagle) increased by almost 103%. This brought the investor not only universal respect and recognition, but also considerable wealth - at the end of 1980, his fortune was estimated at $100 million.

In 1981, something unprecedented happened for the first time - the fund's securities fell by almost 23%, and the year ended without profit. This led to the fact that a third of investors withdrew their money from Quantum. However, the very next year the shares grew by 57%.

The businessman, sensitive to change, realized that the company needed changes. He replaced himself with a talented manager from Minneapolis, Jim Marquez, who began work in 1983. According to its results, the fund’s assets in value increased by 24.9% to $385.5 million.

From now on, Soros managed only half of all investments. This gave me the opportunity to do other things and travel abroad around the world.

White and black stripe

Figure 2. George Soros at the WEF.
Source: website qoshe.com

Quantum continued to develop, and 1985 became a time of victory for it and its founder.

The growth in the value of the fund was 122.2%, in monetary terms - from $449 million to $1 billion.
Soros earned a total of $93.5 million.

Interesting fact ! The story of the Japanese yen is especially noteworthy. On September 22, 1985, the businessman bought several million Japanese government bonds. But the very next day, the dollar fell by 4.3% against the yen, which George took advantage of, earning $40 million overnight.

For the following currency speculation, the talented investor was called “the man who brought down the Bank of England.”

In 1992, Soros opened a position on the British pound sterling on the exchange for more than $10 billion. A bold step and further actions brought him a fantastic profit - $1.1 billion. This led to a chain of events: intervention by the Central Bank of Great Britain, the withdrawal of the British pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), and a significant drop in its exchange rate.

All this made the entrepreneur one of the richest people in the world, richer than some states. In 1993, it had more capital than 42 countries that are members of the UN.

The losing streak began in 1997. In collaboration with Vladimir Potanin, he invested in Russia and bought shares in one of the companies. As a result of a series of operations and the 1998 crisis, Soros lost most of his investments and was forced to sell an unprofitable investment, but did so unsuccessfully. If the businessman had waited a little, he could have sold the asset at twice the price, which could have repaid the costs.

In 1999, his main fund, Quantum, lost $1 billion as a result of unprofitable investments. Other funds also lost significant funds: in total they amounted to $500 million. In business circles they began to say that George had lost his instincts, had lost the tail of luck from his hands. Businessmen began to urgently withdraw their capital from Soros organizations.

But the entrepreneur did not want to give up: he attracted new investors, businessmen saw that some of the funds’ assets continued to grow. At the turn of the millennium, George invested heavily in the Internet.

At first, things went well: the total value of Quantum exceeded $10 billion, but in the early 2000s the so-called “dot-com crisis” occurred. The fund's forecasters did not take into account a number of processes that caused the collapse of the NASDAQ index. As a result, losses exceeded $5 billion.

Soros realized that the “time of big deals” was over and closed his largest fund, deciding to charitable activities, writing books.

Controversial philanthropist and philosopher

Back in 1979, the entrepreneur created the first Open Society charitable foundation, which is still active today; annual funding from the creator is about $300 million. The organization has more than 30 representative offices in different countries. The Foundation finances a number of projects in the fields of education, medicine, civil society, etc.

Interesting fact! In Russia, Open Society appeared in 1995, actively issued grants for 8 years, and in 2015 it was banned and recognized as an undesirable organization.

Speaking about activities in the Russian Federation, the following results can be highlighted:

was donated to educational institutions computer technology;
$100 million allocated to support Russian science and scientists;
scientific equipment and reagents were purchased and provided;
trips to scientific conferences;
in 1996-2001, as part of the implementation of the “University Internet Centers” program, 33 Internet centers, etc., were opened.

A number of educational institutions, foundations for the study of economics, sociology, culture, support for publishing, development of information technology, etc. have been created with money from the Open Society.

Despite the seemingly plausible goals and objectives, many questions arose about the Soros Foundation. There are cases when real and potential scientists were taken abroad and began to work for the interests of Western countries(the so-called “brain drain”).

In particular, in Russia, the philanthropist is accused that charity is a guise under which scientific developments are collected, society is divided, and false propaganda and disinformation are spread.

Interesting fact! The Russian and foreign public is well aware of George Soros's negative attitude towards Russia. He repeatedly called her “enemy No. 1.”

After the collapse of the USSR, the entrepreneur began creating and distributing textbooks for the lower and higher education in Russia. The quality of these publications was very poor and they presented information in a way that diminished the contribution and importance of Russian culture and statehood, information was disseminated that did not correspond to reality.

According to experts and historians, the purpose of such actions was to create a “guilt complex” among the Russian people, a destructive impact on the collective conscious and unconscious.

The activities of the Soros Foundation are being questioned by many countries. According to the latest news:

in the financier’s homeland, Hungary, serious problems are being created for the work of his charitable organization;
a large-scale operation is being carried out in Turkey against all institutions of the fund;
Austria gave 28 days to close the representative office.

George Soros is criticized by many politicians. One of the leaders of Croatia believes that the businessman supports traitors and promotes dangerous ideas into society. The President of Romania accused the investor of subversive, malicious activities.

It is believed that Open Society took a direct part in organizing revolutions in Georgia, countries Central Asia, in Ukraine and in other countries. The foundation's institutions widely supported Hillary Clinton during the last US presidential election in 2016.

Soros is one of the only ones who profited well from the “Brexit” procedure - the withdrawal of Great Britain from the European Union.

You can learn more about what “Brexit” is in the article: “Brexit: what is it, analysis of the results and consequences.”

The entrepreneur is among the richest people in the world. In 2009, his fortune was estimated at $11 billion, in 2012 - already $19 billion. Now, according to Forbes magazine, he has $8 billion, although quite recently his fortune was $23 billion. Soros donated just over $17 billion for the activities of his foundation “ Open Society".