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84-618: American financier George Soros invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the company. He later called it "the worst investment he's ever made". The company was founded in accordance with Presidential Decree №1989 " On Specific Features of State Management of the Public Switched Network in the Russian Federation " dated October 10, 1994, and Government Resolution №1297 dated November 25, 1994, and Government Resolution №742 dated July 24, 1995. Svyazinvest's charter capital

168-618: A Reuters story, "Soros: not a funder of Wall Street Protests ", was published after several commentators pointed out errors in an earlier Reuters story headlined "Who's Behind the Wall St. Protests?" with a lead stating that the Occupy Wall Street movement "may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men [Soros]". Reuters's follow-up article also reported a Soros spokesman and Adbusters ' co-founder Kalle Lasn both saying that Adbusters—the reputed catalyst for

252-439: A Jewish wife in hiding. On one occasion, rather than leave the 14-year-old alone, the official took Soros with him while completing an inventory of a Jewish family's confiscated estate. Tivadar saved not only his immediate family, but also many other Hungarian Jews, and Soros later wrote that 1944 had been "the happiest [year] of his life", for it had given him the opportunity to witness his father's heroism. In 1945, Soros survived

336-689: A cash auction without any investment terms. In November 1999 Svyazinvest's board of directors amended the company charter and turned it into a management company. As part of the measures to assign the status of a management company to Svyazinvest work got under way to improve procedures to manage associates, specifically by consolidating companies located in one region. In 2004, George Soros sold his stake in Svyazinvest to Len Blavatnik for $ 650 million. In April 2011, Svyazinvest subsidiaries were transferred to Rostelecom. In May 2011 with Igor Shchyogolev 's support, Alexander Trubetskoy became chairman of

420-545: A clerk and later moved to the arbitrage department. A fellow employee, Robert Mayer, suggested he apply at his father's brokerage house, F.M. Mayer of New York. In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59). He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U.S. institutional investors following the formation of the Coal and Steel Community , which later became

504-732: A co-chairman of the super PAC's national finance committee. In June 2015, he donated $ 1 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action , which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race . He donated $ 6 million to the PAC in December 2015 and $ 2.5 million in August 2016. Soros launched a new super PAC called Democracy PAC for the 2020 election cycle . By July 2019, he had donated $ 5.1 million to it. Since 2016, Soros has been donating sums exceeding $ 1 million to

588-634: A head in a clash between Lawson and Thatcher's economic adviser Alan Walters , when Walters claimed that the Exchange Rate Mechanism was "half baked". This led to Lawson's resignation as Chancellor; he was replaced by former Treasury Chief Secretary John Major who, with Douglas Hurd , the then Foreign Secretary , convinced the Cabinet to sign Britain up to the ERM in October 1990, effectively guaranteeing that

672-799: A huge short position in pounds sterling for months leading up to the Black Wednesday of September 1992. Soros had recognized the unfavorable position of the United Kingdom in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism . For Soros, the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, their inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices. By September 16, 1992,

756-438: A huge short position in sterling that would become immensely profitable if the currency fell below the lower band of the ERM. Soros believed the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, inflation was too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices. The UK government attempted to prop up the depreciating pound to avoid withdrawal from

840-651: A large part of their 20% performance fees, thereby expanding their stake. By 1981, the fund had grown to $ 400m, and then a 22% loss in that year and substantial redemptions by some of the investors reduced it to $ 200m. In July 2011, Soros announced that he had returned funds from outside investors' money (valued at $ 1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $ 24.5 billion family fortune, due to changes in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, which he felt would compromise his duties of confidentiality to his investors. The fund had at that time averaged over 20% per year compound returns. In 2013,

924-411: A much higher range of £13–27 billion). Trading losses in August and September made up a minority of the losses (estimated at £800 million) and the majority of the loss to the central bank arose from non-realised profits of a potential devaluation . Treasury papers suggested that, had the government maintained $ 24 billion foreign currency reserves and the pound had fallen by the same amount,

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1008-524: A profit of $ 1 billion, during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated the General Theory of Reflexivity for capital markets , to provide insights into asset bubbles and fundamental / market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks. Soros supports progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through

1092-434: A promise later the same day to raise base rates again to 15%, dealers kept selling pounds, convinced that the government would not keep its promise. By 7:00 pm that evening, Lamont announced Britain would leave the ERM and rates would remain at the new level of 12%; however, on the next day the interest rate was back to 10%. It was later revealed that the decision to withdraw had been agreed at an emergency meeting during

1176-531: A railway porter and as a waiter, and once received £40 from a Quaker charity. Soros would sometimes stand at Speakers' Corner lecturing about the virtues of internationalism in Esperanto , which he had learned from his father. Soros obtained his Bachelor of Science in philosophy in 1951 and a Master of Science in philosophy in 1954 from the London School of Economics. After graduating, he wanted to stay in

1260-669: A special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well." In 1997, Soros closed his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $ 3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". According to The New York Times 1997, the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control

1344-472: A variety of jobs and I ended up selling fancy goods on the seaside, souvenir shops, and I thought, that's really not what I was cut out to do. So, I wrote to every managing director in every merchant bank in London, got just one or two replies, and eventually that's how I got a job in a merchant bank." In 1954, Soros began his financial career at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander of London. He worked as

1428-534: A vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder resulted in little enthusiasm for the job; business was slack following the introduction of the Interest Equalization Tax , which undermined the viability of Soros's European trading. He spent the years from 1963 to 1966 with his main focus on the revision of his philosophy dissertation. In 1966, he started a fund with $ 100,000 of the firm's money to experiment with his trading strategies. In 1969, Soros set up

1512-503: Is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge") and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterward stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis. In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered , Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows: The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997

1596-649: The 1992 sterling crisis , was a financial crisis that occurred on 16 September 1992 when the UK Government was forced to withdraw sterling from the (first) European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM   I) , following a failed attempt to keep its exchange rate above the lower limit required for ERM participation. At that time, the United Kingdom held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union . The crisis damaged

1680-588: The Central European University in his Hungarian hometown. Soros's extensive funding of political causes has made him a " bugaboo of European nationalists ". Numerous far-right theorists have promoted claims that characterize Soros as a dangerous "puppet master" behind alleged global plots. Criticisms of Soros, who is of Jewish descent , have often been called antisemitic . In 2018, The New York Times reported that " conspiracy theories about him have gone mainstream, to nearly every corner of

1764-613: The Common Market . In 1959, after three years at F. M. Mayer, Soros moved to Wertheim & Co. He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $ 500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy. He worked as an analyst of European securities until 1963. During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity to extend the ideas of his tutor at the London School of Economics , Karl Popper . Reflexivity posits that market values are often driven by

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1848-581: The Open Society Foundations . Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $ 11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $ 12 billion. He influenced the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to

1932-628: The Republican Party ". György Schwartz was born on 12 August 1930 in Budapest in the Kingdom of Hungary to a prosperous non-observant Jewish family, who, like many upper-middle class Hungarian Jews at the time, were uncomfortable with their roots. Soros has wryly described his home as a Jewish antisemitic home. The family of his mother Erzsébet (also known as Elizabeth) operated a successful silk store. His father Tivadar (also known as Teodoro Ŝvarc)

2016-492: The Siege of Budapest , in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city. George and his mother also spent some time hiding with the family of Elza Brandeisz and even attended their Lutheran church with them. When he was 17, Soros relocated to Paris before eventually moving to England. There he became a student at the London School of Economics . While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper , Soros worked as

2100-477: The devaluation that he would borrow nearly $ 15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell." Soros was believed to have traded billions of Finnish markkas on February 5, 1996, in anticipation of selling them short. The markka had been put floating as a result of the early 1990s depression . The Bank of Finland and the Finnish Government commented at

2184-421: The late-2000s recession , Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess". In Soros's view, the markets' moods—a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which

2268-470: The occupation . Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis : The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper ... I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell

2352-731: The "most generous giver" (in terms of percentage of net worth). He is a resident of New York . Born in Budapest to a non-observant Jewish family, Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and moved to the United Kingdom in 1947. He studied at the London School of Economics and was awarded a BSc in philosophy in 1951, and then a Master of Science degree, also in philosophy, in 1954. Soros started his career working in British and American merchant banks , before setting up his first hedge fund , Double Eagle, in 1969. Profits from this fund provided

2436-601: The Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society". In June 2009, Soros donated $ 100 million to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the Great Recession on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations. Black Wednesday Related: Women [REDACTED] Black Wednesday , or

2520-511: The Conservatives losing the 1997 general election to Labour, who won by a landslide under the leadership of Tony Blair . The Conservatives failed to gain significant ground at the 2001 general election under the leadership of William Hague , with Labour winning another landslide majority. The Conservatives did not take Government again until David Cameron led them to victory in the 2010 general election, 13 years later. Five years later in 2015,

2604-708: The Double Eagle hedge fund with $ 4m of investors' capital including $ 250,000 of his own money. It was based in Curaçao , Dutch Antilles . Double Eagle itself was an offshoot of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder's First Eagle fund established by Soros and that firm's chairman Henry H. Arnhold in 1967. In 1973, the Double Eagle Fund had $ 12 million and formed the basis of the Soros Fund. George Soros and Jim Rogers received returns on their share of capital and 20 percent of

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2688-537: The ERM was set up in 1979, the United Kingdom declined to join. This was a controversial decision, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer , Geoffrey Howe , was staunchly pro-European. His successor, Nigel Lawson , whilst not at all advocating a fixed exchange rate system , nevertheless so admired the low inflationary record of West Germany as to become, by the mid-eighties, a self-styled "exchange-rate monetarist", one viewing

2772-732: The Mark by the Bundesbank , both of which he explained by citing the lasting impact in Germany of the disastrous hyperinflation of the inter-war Weimar Republic . Thus, although the UK had not joined the ERM, at Lawson's direction (and with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher 's reluctant acquiescence), from early 1987 to March 1988 the Treasury followed a semi-official policy of "shadowing" the Deutsche Mark. Matters came to

2856-414: The October poll, following Black Wednesday, their share of the intended vote in the poll had plunged from 43% to 29%. The Conservative government then suffered a string of by-election defeats which saw its 21-seat majority eroded by December 1996. The party's performances in local government elections were similarly dismal during this time, while Labour made huge gains. Black Wednesday was a major factor in

2940-545: The Quantum Fund made $ 5.5 billion, making it again the most successful hedge fund in history. Since its inception in 1973, the fund has generated $ 40 billion. The fund announced in 2015 that it would inject $ 300 million to help finance the expansion of Fen Hotels, an Argentine hotel company. The funds will develop 5,000 rooms over the next three years throughout various Latin American countries. Soros had been building

3024-574: The Société Générale and had no insider knowledge of the business, but he did possess knowledge that a group of investors was planning a takeover attempt. Initial investigations found Soros innocent, and no charges were brought forward. However, the case was reopened a few years later, and the French Supreme Court confirmed the conviction on June 14, 2006, although it reduced the penalty to €940,000. Soros denied any wrongdoing, saying news of

3108-914: The Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratization and that all the NGOs that gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power. Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan . Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey , said in an interview 2006 that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs ... Last year Russia passed

3192-462: The Soros Fund and gave investors in the Double Eagle Fund the option of transferring to that or staying with Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder. It was later renamed the Quantum Fund , after the physical theory of quantum mechanics . By that time the value of the fund had grown to $ 12m, only a small proportion of which was Soros's own money. He and Jim Rogers reinvested their returns from the fund, and also

3276-555: The UK Government would follow an economic and monetary policy preventing the exchange rate between the pound and other member currencies from fluctuating by more than 6%. On 8 October 1990, Thatcher entered the pound into the ERM at DM   2.95 to £1. Hence, if the exchange rate ever neared the bottom of its permitted range, DM   2.773 (€1.4178 at the DM/Euro conversion rate), the government would be obliged to intervene. In 1989,

3360-495: The UK had inflation three times the rate of Germany, higher interest rates at 15%, and much lower labour productivity than France and Germany, which indicated the UK's different economic state in comparison to other ERM countries. From the beginning of the 1990s, high German interest rates, set by the Bundesbank to counteract inflationary effects related to excess expenditure on German reunification , caused significant stress across

3444-595: The United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527). The groups aimed to defeat President George W. Bush . After Bush's reelection, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance , which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America. In August 2009, Soros donated $ 35 million to the state of New York to be earmarked for underprivileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at

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3528-631: The adjustment of exchange rates. In the wake of the rejection of the Maastricht Treaty by the Danish electorate in a referendum in the spring of 1992, and an announcement that there would be a referendum in France as well, those ERM currencies that were trading close to the bottom of their ERM bands came under pressure from foreign exchange traders. In the months leading up to Black Wednesday, among many other currency traders, George Soros had been building

3612-530: The attack on the pound. An interview of Schlesinger by the Wall Street Journal was reported by the German financial paper Handelsblatt . Schlesinger told the journalist that "a more comprehensive realignment" of currencies would be needed, following a recent devaluation of the Italian lira. On the evening of Tuesday, 15 September 1992, the headline was already circulating. Schlesinger said he thought he

3696-696: The bet was estimated at over $ 1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England". The estimated cost of Black Wednesday to the UK Treasury was £3.4 billion. Stanley Druckenmiller , who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound and stated: "[Soros's] contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position". On October 26, 1992, The New York Times quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $ 10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before

3780-511: The board and Vadim Semyonov, who is a citizen of both Canada and Russia , became CEO of Svyazinvest on 3 November 2010 replacing Evgeny Yurchenko because Yurchenko refused to support Konstantin Malofeev 's decisions calling Malofeev "Russia's great raider" ( Russian : «великим рейдером России» ). Svyazinvest is three-quarters owned by Rosproperty and one-quarter owned by Rostelecom . As of June 29, 2006, Svyazinvest's Board of Directors included

3864-493: The campaign's largest donors. For the 2022 United States elections , Soros was the country's largest donor. He donated $ 128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in the election cycle. According to Waldemar A. Nielsen, an authority on American philanthropy, "[Soros] has undertaken... nothing less than to open up the once-closed communist societies of Eastern Europe to a free flow of ideas and scientific knowledge from

3948-609: The campaigns of progressive criminal justice reform proponents through the Safety and Justice PAC in local district attorney elections. In many districts, such large contributions were unprecedented and the campaigning strategy was "turned on its head" with a focus on incarceration, police misconduct and bail system, according to the Los Angeles Times . Larry Krasner was elected as the District Attorney of Philadelphia with

4032-475: The credibility of the second Major ministry in handling of economic matters. The ruling Conservative Party suffered a landslide defeat five years later at the 1997 general election and did not return to power until 2010 . The rebounding of the UK economy in the years following Black Wednesday has been attributed to the depreciation of sterling and the replacement of its currency tracking policy with an inflation targeting monetary stability policy. When

4116-483: The crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline—we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.) In 1999, economist Paul Krugman

4200-499: The day between Lamont, Major, foreign secretary Douglas Hurd , president of the Board of Trade Michael Heseltine , and home secretary Kenneth Clarke (the latter three all being staunch pro-Europeans as well as senior Cabinet ministers), and that the interest rate hike to 15% had only been a temporary measure to prevent a rout in the pound that afternoon. Other ERM countries such as Italy, whose currencies had breached their bands during

4284-399: The day of Black Wednesday, Soros's fund had sold short more than $ 10 billion in pounds , profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or float its currency. Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. Soros's profit on

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4368-424: The day, returned to the system with broadened bands or with adjusted central parities. Some commentators, following Norman Tebbit , took to referring to ERM as an "Eternal Recession Mechanism" after the UK fell into recession during the early 1990s. While many people in the UK recall Black Wednesday as a national disaster that permanently affected the country's international prestige, some Conservatives claim that

4452-509: The extent that the electorate was more inclined to support a claim of the opposition of the time – that the economic recovery ought to be credited to external factors, as opposed to government policies implemented by the Conservatives. The Conservatives had recently won the 1992 general election , and the Gallup poll for September showed a small lead of 2.5% for the Conservative Party. By

4536-403: The fallible ideas of participants, not only by the economic fundamentals of the situation. Ideas and events influence each other in reflexive feedback loops. Soros argued that this process leads to markets having procyclical "virtuous" or "vicious" cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics. From 1963 to 1973, Soros's experience as

4620-452: The first Occupy Wall Street protests—had never received any contributions from Soros, contrary to Reuters's earlier story that reported that "indirect financial links" existed between the two as late as 2010. On September 27, 2012, Soros announced that he was donating $ 1 million to the super PAC backing President Barack Obama 's reelection Priorities USA Action . In October 2013, Soros donated $ 25,000 to Ready for Hillary , becoming

4704-600: The following as members: As of June 29, 2006, the Management Board included the following as members: George Soros George Soros HonFBA (born György Schwartz ; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. As of October 2023 , he had a net worth of US$ 6.7 billion, having donated more than $ 32 billion to the Open Society Foundations , of which $ 15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. In 2020, Forbes called Soros

4788-564: The forced ejection from the ERM was a "Golden Wednesday" or "White Wednesday", the day that paved the way for an economic revival, with the Conservatives handing Tony Blair 's New Labour a much stronger economy in 1997 than had existed in 1992 as the new economic policy swiftly devised in the aftermath of Black Wednesday led to re-establishment of economic growth with falling unemployment and inflation. Monetary policy switched to inflation targeting . The Conservative Party government 's reputation for economic excellence had been damaged to

4872-631: The group effort, opting to personally move forward with his strategy of accumulating shares in four French companies: Société Générale, as well as Suez, Paribas, and the Compagnie Générale d'Électricité . In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB, the French stock exchange regulatory authority) conducted an investigation of whether Soros's transaction in Société Générale should be considered insider trading . Soros had received no information from

4956-548: The help of a $ 1.5 million ad campaign funded by Soros in 2017. Soros was the largest donor supporting the campaign of George Gascón for Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, contributing $ 2.25 million to superPACs in Gascón's favor. Soros gave $ 2 million to a PAC supporting Kim Foxx 's campaign for Cook County State's Attorney in 2020. In the second quarter of 2020, Soros gave at least $ 500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden , becoming one of

5040-443: The international economic and financial system. In 1988, Soros was contacted by a French financier named Georges Pébereau, who asked him to participate in an effort to assemble a group of investors to purchase a large number of shares in Société Générale , a leading French bank that was part of a privatization program (something instituted by the new government under Jacques Chirac ). Soros eventually decided against participating in

5124-464: The markets look at reality—"actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles". In reaction to the Great Recession , he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business, and financial experts, who are mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organizing

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5208-485: The monetary system the country had joined only two years earlier. John Major authorised the spending of billions of pounds worth of foreign currency reserves to buy up sterling being sold on the currency markets. These measures failed to prevent the pound falling below its minimum level in the ERM. The Treasury took the decision to defend sterling's position, believing that to devalue would promote inflation. Remarks by Bundesbank President Helmut Schlesinger triggered

5292-416: The new name because it is a palindrome and because of its meaning. In Hungarian, soros means "next"; in Esperanto it means "will soar". Soros was 13 years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary . The Nazis barred Jewish children from attending school, and Soros and the other schoolchildren were made to report to the Judenrat (" Jewish Council "), which had been established during

5376-418: The newly independent countries. A 2017 study found that a grant program by George Soros which awarded funding to over 28,000 scientists in the former Soviet republics shortly after the end of the Soviet Union "more than doubled publications on the margin, significantly induced scientists to remain in the science sector, and had long-lasting [beneficial] impacts". His funding of pro-democratic programs in Georgia

5460-414: The outside world". From 1979, as an advocate of ' open societies ', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union . In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary with a budget of $ 3 million. Since the fall of the Soviet Union , Soros's funding has played an important role in

5544-430: The party won its first overall majority 23 years after its last in 1992, five months before the crisis. George Soros made over £1 billion in profit by short selling sterling. In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.14 billion, which was revised to £3.3 billion in 2005, following documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (earlier estimates placed losses at

5628-438: The people that if they report they will be deported". I'm not sure to what extent he knew they were going to be gassed. I did what my father said. Soros did not return to that job; his family survived the war by purchasing documents to say that they were Christians. Later that year at age 14, Soros posed as the Christian godson of an official of the collaborationist Hungarian government's Ministry of Agriculture, who himself had

5712-430: The profits each year. In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman. Among those who held senior positions there at various times were Jim Rogers, Stanley Druckenmiller , Mark Schwartz, Keith Anderson, and Soros's two sons. In 1973, due to perceived conflicts of interest limiting his ability to run the two funds, Soros resigned from the management of the Double Eagle Fund. He then established

5796-419: The rate of $ 200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $ 140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act . Soros was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress , and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. In October 2011,

5880-469: The seed money for Soros Fund Management , his second hedge fund, in 1970. Double Eagle was renamed Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised. At its founding, Quantum Fund had $ 12 million in assets under management , and as of 2011 it had $ 25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth. Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England " as a result of his short sale of US$ 10 billion worth of pounds sterling , which made him

5964-400: The sterling–Deutschmark exchange rate as at least as reliable a guide to domestic inflation – and hence to the setting of interest rates – as any of the various M0-M3 measures beloved of those he labelled as " Simon Pure " monetarists. He justified this by pointing to the dependable strength of the Deutsche Mark and the reliably anti-inflationary management of

6048-576: The takeover was public knowledge and it was documented that his intent to acquire shares of the company predated his own awareness of the takeover. In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on various grounds, including that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing. On the basis of Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights , stating that no person may be punished for an act that

6132-468: The time they believed that a "conspiracy" was impossible. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis , the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad , accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. With a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It

6216-457: The trading day. When the markets opened in London the next morning, the Bank of England began their attempt to prop up their currency, as decided by Norman Lamont , the chancellor of the exchequer , and Robin Leigh-Pemberton , governor of the Bank of England . They began accepting orders of £300 million twice before 8:30 am, but to little effect. The Bank of England's intervention

6300-605: The university and work as a professor, but his grades were not high enough, prompting him to work for an investment firm in London. In a discussion at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 2006, Alvin Shuster, former foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times , asked Soros, "How does one go from an immigrant to a financier? ... When did you realize that you knew how to make money?". Soros replied, "Well, I had

6384-421: The whole of the ERM. The UK and Italy had additional difficulties with their double deficits , while the UK was also hurt by the rapid depreciation of the United States dollar – a currency in which many British exports were priced – that summer. Issues of national prestige and the commitment to a doctrine that the fixing of exchange rates within the ERM was a pathway to a single European currency inhibited

6468-599: Was a lawyer and a well-known Esperanto author who edited the Esperanto literary magazine Literatura Mondo and raised his son to speak the language. Tivadar had also been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest. His parents married in 1924. In 1936, Soros's family changed their name from the German-Jewish "Schwartz" to "Soros", as protective camouflage in increasingly antisemitic Hungary. Tivadar liked

6552-713: Was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution , although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated". Alexander Lomaia , secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation ( Soros Foundation ), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $ 2.5 million. Former Georgian foreign minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like

6636-429: Was critical of Soros's effect on financial markets: [N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is "Soroi". In an interview concerning

6720-614: Was formed by consolidating state-owned stakes in 85 joint stock telecommunications companies. Svyazinvest passed official state registration on September 18, 1995. In accordance with Resolution №618 issued by the Russian government on May 23, 1997, the Russian Federal Property Fund and the State Committee of the Russian Federation for State Property Management put up for sale an interest equaling 25% + 1 share in Svyazinvest at

6804-435: Was ineffective because traders were dumping pounds far faster. The Bank of England continued to buy, and traders continued to sell, until Lamont told Prime Minister John Major that their pound purchasing was failing to produce results. At 10:30 am on 16 September, the British government announced an increase in the base interest rate , from an already high 10%, to 12% to tempt speculators to buy pounds. Despite this and

6888-487: Was not a criminal offense at the time that it was committed, the court agreed to hear the appeal. In October 2011, the court rejected his appeal in a 4–3 decision, saying that Soros had been aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws. Until the 2004 presidential election, Soros had not been a large donor to U.S. political campaigns. According to OpenSecrets , during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $ 23,581,000 to various 527 Groups (tax-exempt groups under

6972-641: Was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity ... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing

7056-484: Was speaking off the record. He later wrote that he stated a fact and this could not have triggered the crisis. This remark hugely increased pressure on the pound leading to large sterling sales. Currency traders began a massive sell-off of pounds on Wednesday, 16 September 1992. The Exchange Rate Mechanism required the Bank of England to accept any offers to sell pounds. However, the Bank of England only accepted orders during

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