George Soros

George Soros (born 12 August 1930) is a Hungarian-born American investor and philanthropist whose career spans currency speculation and global grant-making. Having emigrated from communist Hungary to England and later the United States, Soros studied philosophy at the London School of Economics before entering finance, where he founded the Quantum Fund in 1970, achieving average annual returns of approximately 30% over three decades through aggressive trading strategies.

His most renowned trade occurred on [[Black Wednesday]] in 1992, when he shorted the British pound, profiting over $1 billion as the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism—a feat that earned him the moniker "the man who broke the Bank of England." This success, built on Soros Fund Management's offshore structure, propelled his net worth to peaks above $25 billion before extensive philanthropy reduced it to around $7 billion by 2025.

Since initiating philanthropy in 1979 with scholarships for Black South Africans under apartheid, Soros has donated more than $32 billion—primarily through the Open Society Foundations, formalized in the 1980s—to support open exchange of ideas, democratic transitions in post-communist states, and reforms in areas like criminal justice and drug policy. These efforts, inspired by philosopher Karl Popper's concept of open societies, have funded civil society groups, independent media, and electoral advocacy worldwide, contributing to the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. However, the foundations' grants have fueled controversies, with governments in Hungary, Russia, and elsewhere accusing Soros of financing opposition movements and undermining national stability, while in the United States, his backing of progressive district attorneys has been linked by critics to implemented policies that reduced prosecutions and contributed to documented increases in violent and property crime.