An academic as well as a billionaire investor, Hungarian-born Soros is somewhat unusual.
His ‘Quantum Fund’ returned more than 4,000% in its first decade of existence while he studied under Karl Popper, one of the 20th century’s most distinguished philosophers. But he has always maintained that his investment activities – which would make many a Wall Street high-flier green with envy – are a means to an end, to support his true calling as an author and philosopher.
Given his background, Soros’ maverick take on the usually all-consuming world of finance is not particularly surprising. Born Schwartz Gyorgy in Budapest in 1930 to an Esperanto writer, he survived Nazi attempts to exterminate Hungary’s Jews before witnessing Soviet and Nazi battles in the city of his birth.
He showed his entrepreneurial streak early, by trading currency during the economic crisis that followed the war. Attending an Esperanto conference enabled him to escape life behind the Iron Curtain, and he went on to study at the London School of Economics and live in the US, working as a currency trader and investor.
Soros only set up an investment fund to make enough money to support his writing career. It ended up accruing enough money to support the careers of 50 Premiership footballers, never mind that of a humble writer.
The Quantum Fund is now recognised as performing better than any investment fund in history. Yet Soros is better known, still, for making an estimated $1.1bn out of “selling short” the British pound during ‘black Wednesday’ – the abrupt exit of sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).
Despite his billions (of which there ar) Soros is a political radical. He funds the open society institute aimed at promoting political freedom in developing countries, and has campaigned against George W Bush. Ousting the White House incumbent is, he says, “a matter of life and death”.
Most surprising of all, he has lobbied for a complete overhaul of the very global financial system that has brought him immense wealth. He says it inhibits the healthy development of many countries and is inherently unstable – but adds that he will continue to make money out of it as a self-interested human being.
