Soros how old is he. Secrets of George Soros

Greetings! Who is George Soros? On the one hand, the 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 various countries.

Getting acquainted? George Soros: The biography of the man who brought down the Bank of England.

George Soros is not the real name of the billionaire. At birth, he was named Gyorgy Schwarz. 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 whole family, changing the Jewish surname to a Hungarian one.

In 1947, Soros ended up in the UK, 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 “looks for himself” for some time. In his youth, he manages to work as a salesman, a waiter in a restaurant, an apple picker, a station porter and an assistant manager at a haberdashery factory.

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

The beginning of 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.

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

Around the same time, George creates his own theory: “market reflection”, which he later describes 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 correctly use the world's 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 caused by it 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? It attracts funds from a narrow circle of people and invests them in high-yield assets.

The history of Quantum resembles a cardiogram with sharp ups and downs. But in general, the results of the fund's work are impressive. Quantum investors earned about $32 billion from investments in the fund. By the way, this is a confident first place in terms of profit in the entire history of hedge funds.

The legend of the "black environment"

I'll start from afar. In October 1990, Soros met Stanley Druckenmiller, a Wall Street fund manager. Despite the fact that the age difference is 30 years, the financiers have become 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 bit. In the fall of 1992, the pound was steadily declining throughout the week. Friends-speculators decided to make money on it. Soros added a personal capital of £5bn to the fund's money. And put a short position for a total amount of more than 10 billion pounds.

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

By his speculation, George forced the Bank of England to make a large injection of foreign exchange from government reserves. And he took the pound out of the European currency regulation mechanism.

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

In 1997, Soros decided to repeat the "British collapse" in South Asia, attacking the currencies of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. The 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 barely recovered from the blow.

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

Speculator's catastrophic mistakes

George Soros' biggest financial failure has to do with Russia. In 1997, together with Russian oligarch Potanin, he creates an offshore Mustcom and buys a 25% stake in Svyazinvest through it.

And in 1998, a default struck in Russia. All prices have tripled. On the purchase and sale of Svyazinvest, the legendary speculator lost $1.25 billion.

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

The total loss of Soros for 1999 exceeded $1.5 billion. Clients began to massively withdraw their investments from 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, this time bullish. 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 Foundation lost $5 billion, 2.5 times more than in 1999. In 2004, the billionaire liquidates the fund. And in 2011, he officially “retires”, having completed 40 years of work in the field of hedge fund management. From that moment on, the legendary speculator and philanthropist is engaged only in personal projects and manages exclusively family capital.

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

P.S. My favorite quote from George Soros: "Success requires leisure - time that belongs entirely to you."

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

In any sphere of human life there are legendary personalities. These are individuals who have become famous for their great achievements, discoveries and other deeds that have changed the world. If you are interested in the history of the world of finance, be sure to come across the name of George Soros. This is a controversial figure who has become a subject for imitation, in some cases censure, but much more often - admiration. Who is George Soros and what is the alchemy of his finances, you can find out in this article.

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

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

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

Biography of George Soros and the first steps of formation

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

Childhood

D. Soros was born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1930. George's father earned money as a publisher and worked as a barrister. At the very beginning of the Second World War, using fake documents made by George's father himself, the Soros family, fleeing German repression, left Budapest, moving to the UK. There they were able to settle in the suburbs of the capital - London. From this moment on, George's biography began new chapter, where the cruel reality of that period of time made him grow up quickly.

Soros acquired primary education in the ordinary high school where he studied until the age of 17. At that time, George became interested in finance and after graduating from school he became a student at the School of Economics in London, where he studied for 3 years. Things were not going well for his family. Therefore, already at that time, Soros was forced to look for ways to earn money and, not having sufficient education, took on any low-paid and not prestigious part-time job, from an apple picker to a dishwasher and a waiter in London pubs.

Youth

After graduating from the College of Economics, George set about looking for a real job in his specialty, but all that the young specialist was lucky enough to find was the position of an assistant manager at a small haberdashery factory, having received in his job duties the supply of customers with factory products on an old Ford that was living out its days.

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

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

Soros received a new position at a small broker, where the young alchemist of finance began to comprehend the art of international arbitration, more precisely, to resell the securities he bought up to the end buyers of the stock market. The results of George's work and his authority began to go up rapidly. But his rise to the top was interrupted by the Suet Crisis, which disrupted his firm's securities arbitrage tactics.

Maturity

But it was this fact that changed Soros's life in better side. inventing new strategy, George demonstrated his potential and out-of-the-box way of thinking to his management. The “internal arbitrage” that Soros came up with allowed the company he worked for not only to stay afloat, but also quickly break into the Wall Street leadership.

After some time, John F. Kennedy imposed additional fees on foreign investment, making George's tactics low-return. However, having gained experience, skills and earned a certain authority in stock exchange circles, George decided to leave the company in which he worked and set about writing a thesis, which had remained unfinished since the days of the London School of Economics.

Most likely, it was a stage in life when George, who had matured in his worldviews, tried to comprehend the experience he had gained and find the most optimal path for his further career climb.

From theory to practice

Soros returned to the exchange world in 1966. And George's new company was the Double Egle exchange fund, to which Soros came with his savings and 100 thousand dollars borrowed from his comrades. It's time to show your theoretical achievements in practice! With this period of biography, few people associate the period of Soros's success, although it is from this place that George's biography begins to become the most interesting. Having taken the place of the executive director of the fund, George Soros began to actively implement his philosophy of finance.

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

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

Like any other figure in the world of finance, not all steps of George Soros brought only profit. It is human nature to err, and therefore the alchemy of finances of D. Soros sometimes failed. In 1997, he made a mistake and linked one of his lines of business with a Russian company, Svyazinvest, which soon went bankrupt. As a result, George Soros lost a pretty decent part of his capital (how much history is silent). This situation is exactly that fly in the ointment, which shows that in real life any success is associated with a certain share of defeats, and in the financial market it is impossible to make a profit without losing trades!

Patronage and charity

However, he achieved fame for D. Soros not only in connection with the success of his hedge operations. Soros is also known as a philanthropist, whose generosity knows no bounds. His investments in science and culture are regular and extensive. He is a frequent guest at various scientific and cultural events and conferences, donates money to orphanages and schools. Several educational programs operate under its auspices.

In the course of the endless process of making a profit, Soros has not lost his human face and, unlike the vast majority of personalities from the Forbes rating, has largely remained ordinary person who is not alien to compassion and pity.

Books by D. Soros

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

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

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

Problems with law

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

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

Also, this well-known investor was involved in several more high-profile frauds in the securities market, but it was not possible to prove his guilt to the regulatory authorities and the courts.

Black Wednesday

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

On September 16, 1992, George opened a $10 billion sell deal on the British, causing a significant collapse in the value of the British currency. Soros came to the aid of the theory of "reflexive markets" invented by him, which in practice caused a wave of massive sales of the pound sterling by other bidders. The British currency collapsed by 1,000 p/p in a matter of hours. For 1992, the fall of the currency by 1000 points was something of a fantasy. The Bank of England even had to urgently intervene in the situation through large-scale foreign exchange interventions, and remove the pound sterling from the list of exchange currencies, since its collapse could drag the EU currency down.

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Father's Secret

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

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

And from dad George, he said, inherited the ability to make money and take risks. " My father didn't work, he just made money." Soros once dropped in an interview. Tivador Shorosh was a prosecutor by profession, but he never "burned" in the service. At the same time, he loved to live in a big way.

Soros's father was called a sly by many, but his son sincerely considered him a hero. The family loved to talk about how in the First world war George's father fought and was taken prisoner by Russia, and then traveled around Russia for three whole years, reaching his native Hungary.

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

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

At first, the free Western world met the immigrant boy unfriendly. At first, he huddled in an apartment with his countrymen and was hired either as a waiter or as a porter ... And sometimes, hungry, he envied a street cat that ate a herring.

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

George Soros always recalled the London period of his life as a nightmare. "Well, I sank to the very bottom, - he thought then. - From here you can only go up."."He always looked kind of unsettled", - a bank colleague spoke about George.

By the way, Soros did not break through in London. While working in a bank, he began trading shares of gold mining companies, but saved up only five thousand dollars in three years. With this money in 1956, an ambitious young man went to conquer America.

Mystery of money

The alchemy of big money was revealed to Soros only in the States. And even then not immediately.

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

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

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

Soros himself was worth $100 million in 1980. The financier never revealed the secret of his unprecedented success. " He buys stocks when his back hurts and sells when the pain goes away."- the adult son of Soros once said jokingly.

Many people spoke about the extraordinary intuition of the financier. But this was also called his huge natural mind and ability to understand the cause-and-effect relationships of the world economy. As well as determination and nerves of steel: Soros could dispassionately stake huge amounts of money.

They say that personal life has never been in the forefront of the great financier. For the first time, he married at 31 a German woman, Anna-Louise, whom he met in the company of emigrants. They happily lived together for 17 years, having given birth to three children.

In 1983, George left his first family for a young American, Susan Weber, daughter of a New York bag and shoe manufacturer. With her, he also lived happily in marriage for twenty years, having given birth to two more children. In a word, nothing interesting!

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

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

And on September 15, 1992, Soros again earned 1 billion pounds in one night and became famous all over the world as "The Man Who Crushed the Bank of Great Britain". On that Black Wednesday, the British pound sterling fell in price by half. And that was the work of Soros.

The secret of life

"Millionaires spend money, but billionaires make history"- this phrase belongs to Soros himself. In the early 90s, the personal fortune of the financier exceeded two billion dollars, and, apparently, political ambitions surged in him.

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

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

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

It is believed that political ambitions played with George Soros bad joke. He allegedly did not earn big dividends in politics, but he lost his unique financial instinct. And since the end of the 90s, a period of great bad luck began in Soros's life.

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

And then followed the unfortunate failures with the shares of Internet companies, then - unsuccessful fraud with the euro. And each time - multi-million dollar losses. "The time to make money for me is over" - Soros said. Seemingly not wanting to tempt fate any further, in 2004 he handed over the billion-dollar remnants of his business to his sons.

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

Soros divorced his second wife in 2004. And since then, the young American violinist Jennifer Chun, the widow of the King of Jordan - Nur, "Miss Russia-1998" Anna Malova and the young Russian blonde Marina Celle have managed to visit the girlfriends of the billionaire pensioner.

George Soros, a world-famous financier, received the title of “modern Robin Hood” from the Times magazine because, according to the publication, he takes money from the rich and gives it to the poor, in the modern world these are the countries of Eastern Europe and Russia. Soros, earning huge money on speculations against the central banks of developed countries, invests them in projects to create the so-called "open society" in the post-communist countries located in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

August 12, 1930 in Budapest, in the very ordinary family a boy named Gyord Schwartz was born, who later the whole world recognized as George Soros. George's father, Tivadar Schwartz, was from an humble and poor family, while his mother's parents, Erzebet Suts, were very wealthy people.

Tivadar was a very versatile person. He was a lawyer and a prominent figure in the Jewish community of Budapest, founded a literary magazine, of which he became editor for a time, and regularly published his work there as an Esperanto writer. Soros' parents came from Jewish families, but there was no way to call them Orthodox Jews.

Tivadara Schwartz was not a workaholic. He often preferred fun, relaxing in the pool, cafe or ice rink, proud that he could afford to work much less than the rest. Sometimes it even led to the loss of potential clients who were afraid to entrust their cases to such a peculiar lawyer. However, Tivadar was quite able to maintain such a frivolous lifestyle thanks to a decent income that brought the property owned by the family. Soros's father took particular pleasure in risk, a sense of danger, and the joy of being able to avoid sad consequences. George Soros was able to adopt this skill from his father, which became very useful in the future, when he began to play on the stock exchange and not only earn money, but also enjoy the risks associated with these operations.

Soros's father volunteered during the First World War, without experiencing any special patriotic feelings. It just became another opportunity for him to walk on the edge of a knife.

Tivadar fought for Austria-Hungary, was taken prisoner by Russia. He was sent to Siberia, to a prison camp, from where he managed to escape and returned to Budapest, having made a difficult and dangerous journey home.

George and his brother Paul could always count on their father to provide them with any amount of money, no matter how much they asked. Thus, Tivadar tried to instill in his sons a responsible attitude towards money. Despite a fairly decent income, the head of the family himself managed the money rather ineptly, which left very serious gaps in the family budget.

Memories of financial difficulties are firmly embedded in the memories of the young Soros and became another incentive for him to earn as much as possible. On the other hand, the ease with which his father treated money was transferred to George himself, allowing him to spend simply huge amounts on charity.

Surname change

In the 30s, the Soros family had to go through hard times. It was at this time, or rather in 1936, that a decision was made to change the Jewish surname Schwartz to the Hungarian Soros (“Shorosh”). Translated from Hungarian, it means “follower”, and in Esperanto it means “soar” in the future tense, which Tivadar really liked.

In 1944, the Nazis came to Hungary. They invited all Jews to register with the German administration. Tivadar immediately realized that this would not bring his family anything good and decided to get lost among the Hungarians who profess Christianity. To do this, forged documents were made for all family members, after which they dispersed to different parts Budapest, trying to attract as little attention as possible.

In order to protect his sons, Tivadar even got certificates stating that he was circumcised solely for medical reasons. As a result of fascist repressions, 440 thousand Jews were destroyed, and the Soros family managed to survive.

The financial situation of the Soros at that time left much to be desired. Tivadar had to show all his abilities in order to find a way out of a variety of and very difficult situations. He not only took care of his relatives, but also helped many Jews in Budapest to obtain false documents, and for the poor this service was free, and for the rich it cost a lot of money, sometimes 20 times more expensive than for people with average incomes. According to George Soros himself, this was his father's finest hour, when he worked like never before, without experiencing the slightest fear or despair. The threat of fascist reprisals hung over the Soros until January 1945, when the Red Army troops liberated Budapest.

Local residents met their liberators with open arms, but when the prospect of life under the socialist regime arose before them, their attitude towards Soviet troops noticeably changed. Socialism (and even more so communism), like fascism, was regarded by the Hungarians solely as a threat. During the two post-war years, the Hungarian economy faced hyperinflation. It was then that George Soros took his first steps in the foreign exchange market.

Moscow or London?

Life in post-war Hungary was unpromising for George, and at the age of 17 he decided to leave Budapest. The father asked his son where he intended to go, and George replied: “To Moscow, to see what this socialism is like, or to London: there is the Air Force (then they listened to the Air Force with the whole family).”

Tivadar helped George make the final decision by talking him out of going to Moscow. According to Soros himself, it was his father who laid in him the worldview that later allowed him to earn a lot of money and become a great investor.

lived in Britain distant relatives Sorosov, whom Tivadar once helped to escape from Hungary fake documents. They then settled George after his arrival in London. In the beginning, he was not very sweet, he even had to starve. It's hard to imagine, but one day the future billionaire became jealous of a cat that ate a herring right on the street.

In 1949, George entered the London School of Economics, where he studied for three years. In order to somehow survive, he had to constantly look for odd jobs: either at a haberdashery factory, then as a traveling salesman, then as a waiter, apple picker, porter at the station, without giving up the hope of eventually becoming a bank employee. Despite his meager budget, which at that time was about 4 pounds a week, George did not neglect personal bookkeeping. He kept a careful record of all income and expenses, trying to reduce his expenses so that there was still something left of his modest earnings.

In 1953, Soros graduated from the London School of Economics and went to work in the arbitration department of Singer and Friedlander. The office of the firm was next to the stock exchange, and George's manager was engaged in trading in shares of gold mining companies.

career in the USA. The goal is to earn half a million

In 1956, the father of a London friend of Soros invited him to the United States to work in a small Wall Street brokerage firm owned by him. At first, George was engaged in international arbitration, that is, he bought and sold securities in different countries, receiving income from the difference in prices. But after a while, the Suez crisis broke out and this type of business began to gradually fade away.

Then Soros refocused his activities on a new type of brokerage business, which he himself called "internal arbitrage", the essence of which was to sell combined securities (stocks, bonds and warrants) separately before they were officially divided.

At first, the income from this activity was quite decent, but then President Kennedy introduced additional fees on foreign investment, which had a very negative impact on the amount of profit. Soros again had to look for a new source of income.

Immediately after his arrival in America, Soros began to invest, using his modest savings as capital, as well as the funds of his friends and acquaintances. After some time, these operations have already brought a good income. George set himself the goal of earning half a million dollars so that he could leave his job and pursue philosophy, which he then considered his true calling.

But, appetite comes with eating. As revenues grew at a pace that was ahead of the wildest expectations, George's goals became more and more ambitious. He no longer dreamed of leaving the investment business, because this game brought not only money, but also the pleasure of risk and his own talents.

After graduating from business school, Soros began writing a dissertation, which he unsuccessfully tried to complete for three years (from 1963 to 1966). The results of work on the treatise "The Heavy Burden of Consciousness" did not satisfy George at all, and he decided that he was much better at investing than philosophizing or holding the post of top manager. At that time he was Vice President of Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder.

In 1967, Soros managed to convince the company's management to establish and transfer the First Eagle offshore fund under its management. Just two years later, another fund was formed, this time a hedge fund called the Double Eagle, which was also run by Soros. But after a while, George had to give up managing the funds due to decisions made by the regulators. Then he, together with Jim Rogers, founded his own fund called Quantum. This happened in 1970. By 1980, as a result of ongoing speculation, the profitability of the Quantum fund reached 3365% per year, which largely provided Soros with his huge fortune, which by 2009 amounted to about $ 11 billion.

The theory of market reflexivity

George Soros is not only a very talented investor, but also a generous billionaire, which puts him on a par with such prominent people as Carnegie and Rockefeller. At the same time, Soros himself considers his intellectual abilities to be the main wealth. Since childhood, he wanted to become a second Keynes or Einstein, taking a great interest not only in finance, but also to a much greater extent in philosophy.

Karl Popper and George Soros

During his studies at the London School of Economics, Soros attended a course by the Anglo-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas he was very interested in. The theory of "reflexivity", formulated by Popper, states that in processes involving a person, the observer is part of the objective reality that he observes.

As a result, the observation itself can influence the reality that the observer analyzes. This is the main difference between animate and inanimate nature. It was on the basis of this theory that Soros formulated his "theory of market reflexivity" and applied it with great success to his own exchange operations.

The essence of the theory is that traders make their decisions, whether buying or selling securities, solely on the basis of their own expectations of changes in price levels. Any expectation is an exclusively psychological category that can be influenced by information impact. The moods and expectations of trading participants inevitably affect their transactions, as a result of which the influence of fundamental market factors is distorted.

According to Soros himself, it was this approach that allowed him to achieve amazing success on the stock exchange. But people who have worked with him believe that he relies primarily on his intuition and foresight, and his philosophy often has nothing to do with it. For example, son Robert says about his father: "He buys when his back hurts, and sells when the pain goes away."

The man who brought down the Bank of England

George Soros became famous precisely for his currency speculation. Traders who have been working in the market for a long time still remember September 16, 1992, the day that went down in the history of the foreign exchange market as “black Wednesday”. Then Soros opened a short position on the pound for 10 billion dollars, closing which, in just one day, he became richer by 1 billion.

The result of this operation was that the Bank of England had to carry out a large-scale intervention and, after some time, withdraw the pound sterling from the exchange rate mechanism European countries, causing the pound to rapidly depreciate against all major currencies. After the incident, Soros began to be called "the man who brought down the Bank of England."

Not all transactions of George Soros were crowned with success. A vivid example of an unsuccessful project is the operation to create in 1997, together with Potanin, the offshore Mustcom, which bought out 25% of the shares of OJSC Svyazinvest for $ 1.875 billion, the value of which after the 1998 crisis fell by more than half. For Soros, this was the worst investment of money in his entire life. In 2004, he finally managed to get rid of these securities. The deal with Access Industries, managed by Leonard Blavatnik, a shareholder of TNK-BP, totaled only $625 million. Blavatnik himself sold shares in Svyazinvest to Comstar-UTS, part of AFK Sistema, at the end of 2006 for 1.3 billion. he receives from the most senior officials in the governments of different countries and the governing bodies of the largest corporations.

In 2002, Soros even had to pay a fine of 2.2 million euros by the decision of the Paris court for using confidential information. According to the prosecution, the information obtained illegally allowed the investor to earn $ 2 million on the shares of the French bank Societe Generale.

Many investors try to make their operations on the stock exchange as reliable as possible. But not George Soros, who has a heightened appetite for risk, using borrowed funds and doing all the things that most other players try to avoid, and is satisfied with the excitement and the fact that he once again emerged victorious from a difficult situation, in which came of his own free will. Soros himself said that 1944 was the best year of his life. Then he and his whole family were literally on the verge of death. His father helped his compatriots obtain false documents, risking his own life daily.

These documents saved the lives of many Hungarian Jews. Little George saw all this, and the same love of risk and danger that was inherent in his father was transmitted to him. “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 country. And my family is lucky. My father was not afraid to take risks. The life lesson that I learned during the war is that sometimes you can lose everything, even your own life, if you don’t take risks.”

Charity and Soros foundations

George Soros began to engage in charity work in 1979, when his first foundation, the Open Society, was formed. At the same time, in South Africa, engulfed by apartheid, a foundation was organized under his leadership, whose tasks included supporting black students at the University of Cape Town. In Eastern Europe, the first Soros fund began operating in 1984. It is quite logical that this happened in Hungary. Soros did not bypass Russia with his attention, where in 1987 he decided to support an open society. His funds were opened almost throughout the entire territory of the post-Soviet space.

In addition, the International Science Foundation (ISF) began its work in 1992, the main task of which was to help scientists in Russia and the countries of the former USSR in their work during a very difficult transition period, which could allow them to continue research and not immigrate to other countries. . The MNF has paid out over $115 million and has had a huge impact in reducing the so-called "brain drain", which as a result has helped prevent Russia's intellectual resources from being used for destructive purposes. In 1990, with the help of funding from George Soros, the Central European University was founded, which began its work in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw.

At the end of 2003, Soros decided to stop his charitable activities in Russia. Less than a year later, the Open Society Foundation stopped making grants. But those structures that were created earlier continued their work even after the termination of funding from the American investor. Among them are the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences, the PRO ARTE Institute Foundation for Culture and Art, the D.S. Likhachev International Charitable Foundation, the Pushkin Library, a non-profit foundation for supporting book publishing, education and new information technologies. Charity organisations, created with the money of George Soros, operate in more than 50 countries around the world.

Most of them are located in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia and the USA. Their main task is to support the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. Each year, these funds transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to support certain categories of citizens and entire countries.

George Soros strategy

What is the secret of such an amazing financial success of George Soros, whose fortune before the 2008 crisis was about 7.2 billion dollars? Soros carried out almost all of his operations through the secret offshore company Quantum Fund NV, which is registered on the Caribbean island of Curacao, which is under the jurisdiction of the Netherlands.

This fund is still the largest in the financial empire of George Soros.

If we compare the two brilliant financiers of recent times - Warren Buffett and George Soros, then there are much more differences in their characters and vision of the world than similarities. Buffett gives his preference to long-term investments and does not try to exert any noticeable influence on the market. Soros, on the contrary, strives for fame and world recognition. His figure on the global financial Olympus is very ambiguous and controversial.

In his youth, Soros was seriously interested in philosophy. Perhaps this was the reason for his versatile activities, which include charity, participation in public life and literary work. In terms of his approach to trading, Soros is 100% bearish, that is, he prefers to play for a fall.

That is why most of his fortune was earned during periods of major global crises and with the help of an individual approach, called "the theory of reflexivity of stock markets." Soros believes that the price of a currency (his favorite trading instrument) is determined based on future expectations. Anyone who knows how to influence these expectations gains control of the foreign exchange market. Soros's operations are based on short-term speculative transactions, for which he actively uses borrowed funds.

He considers his absolute advantage that he does not have a certain style of trading. In each specific situation, George will try to adjust to the current market conditions. For example, 10 years ago, his funds specialized in currency transactions, and today investments in industry have become the main instrument. Today, global economic trends are receiving more and more attention from this great investor. Soros considers intuition to be one of the foundations for making trading decisions and tries to actively develop it.

It is quite normal practice for him to create a possible scenario with the help of a hypnotist, and then see how accurately it will be implemented. Soros believes that weak analytical skills are by no means an obstacle to those who want to get rich with the help of the financial market. After all, he does not consider himself to be a specialist in the field of securities.
The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros. One of the main qualities that allowed Soros to reach the pinnacle of financial success was his caution and self-criticism.

According to the investor himself, this is what made him constantly on the alert, to calculate everything possible options developments and make decisions with lightning speed. Every novice trader will read in any book on the basics of trading and investing a rule that says that when conducting trading operations, you should never give in to emotions. But Soros has been breaking this rule for many years, he rejoices in his victories like a child and is very upset when he has to record losses.

Legalize marijuana and down with Bush!

George Soros came to Manhattan 50 years ago with just a few dollars and huge ambitions. Today he lives in a prestigious penthouse in one of the New York skyscrapers. His wealth and influence modern world so great that it surpasses the capabilities of entire states whose flags fly near the UN headquarters just a few steps from his home. George Soros does not flaunt his power and wealth - he does not buy expensive cars, does not invest in sports clubs, luxurious castles or other "toys" for the elite of this world.

Soros demonstrates his limitless possibilities through his own actions, whether it be charity or activities in the financial or political sphere, sometimes collapsing currencies or setting the vector for the development of entire regions. George Soros actively advocates for the legalization of same-sex marriage and the free trade of marijuana for medical purposes. He was against the re-election of George W. Bush for a second term and spent more than $23 million in an attempt to prevent this event.

Probably, this is how a billionaire philosopher should behave, who is aware that he has every opportunity to change the world for the better. “I have always felt like an exceptional person,” says George Soros.

George Soros was married twice, but both of his marriages ended unsuccessfully. He has five children: three from his first wife - Robert, Andrea, Jonathan and two - from the second, Alexander and Gregory. In 2004, Soros retired from managing the Quantum Endowment Fund, handing over the reins of the firm to his eldest son, Robert. George's older brother, Paul Soros, shares the interests of his famous relative, engaging in investment and charitable activities.

On the night of August 12, 2012, George Soros during the celebration of his 82nd birthday with 40-year-old Tamiko Bolton (Tamiko Bolton). The fiancée of a well-known investor, formerly an online dietary supplement trader, now owns a company offering online yoga classes.

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

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

In England, he found work in a haberdashery factory, where he began working as a salesman. Then he got a job as a traveling salesman, offering goods to various merchants in the seaside resorts of Wales. In 1953, Soros got a job at Singer & Friedlander. Work and at the same time an internship took place in the arbitration department, which was located next to the stock exchange. Its leader traded shares of gold mining companies.

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

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

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

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

George Soros earned all his money by playing for a fall. Soros's main tactic is the theory of stock market reflexivity. According to this tactic, all trading decisions are made by the speculator based on future price expectations.

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

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

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

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

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

George Soros is the president and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, a privately held investment management firm, and a senior advisor to several international investment firms, the Quantum Group of Funds. In July 2000, Soros merged his flagship Quantum Fund with the Quantum Emerging Growth Fund to form the Quantum Endowment Fund.

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

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

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

George Soros received honorary degrees in new school Social Research, Oxford University, Budapest University of Economics, Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros with its highest distinction, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to support open societies throughout the world.

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

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

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

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources