Soros is a prominent figure in the world of philanthropy. As of the time this article was written, he has donated 32 billion dollars from his personal wealth to a charitable organization that he established called Open Society Foundations. To date, Open Society Foundations has given approximately $15 billion to a wide variety of charitable organizations.
Throughout his outstanding career, Soros, who survived the Holocaust, contributed significant funding to a variety of cultural projects in order to advance progressive causes and human rights activities.
Early life
On August 12, 1930, George Soros was born in Budapest, which is located in the Kingdom of Hungary. During the years 1944 and 1945, while Soros was still a youth, he lived through the Nazi occupation of his country and was a witness to societal crimes that are incomprehensible.
During this trying time in history, being Jewish in a region of Europe that was conquered by the Nazis was frequently a sentence to death. In a relatively short amount of time, more than 500,000 Jewish people in Hungary were killed.
Young George, who came from a Jewish family and was at risk of being apprehended and killed, was obviously affected by the terror of this era, which he witnessed at such a young age and for which he was responsible. It was a stroke of good luck for Soros and his family that they were able to conceal their true identities and get counterfeit identification documents, which allowed them to avoid a potentially disastrous outcome.
Perhaps marking the beginning of Soros’s journey as a philanthropist, he and his family were instrumental in the process of securing documentation for a large number of other Jewish families who were in imminent danger.
After several decades had passed, when asked about the event, Soros provided the following explanation:
“We did not give up on our destinies; rather, we fought back against a malevolent force that was significantly more powerful than we were, and as a result, we were victorious. Not only did we get it through the ordeal, but we were also able to assist other people.”
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After the conclusion of World War II, the Hungarian Communist Party assumed power in the government. In 1947, Soros left his home in Budapest and traveled to London, England. There, he attended The London School of Economics while working as a waiter and a railway porter to put himself through school. Soros was a guy who believed in democratic values.
A Career in Finance
In the end, Soros made the decision to immigrate to the United States. It was in the United States that he started his career in finance and investing, a choice that ultimately prepared the path for him to become a globally recognized financier.
His previous employers include F. M. Mayer, where he worked as an arbitrage trader, and Wertheim & Co., where he worked as an analyst.
In 1973, Soros established what would become Soros Fund Management. Decades later, Soros Funds Management would be described as one of the most profitable hedge funds in the history of the industry. It would do this by providing an annual rate of return of twenty percent on average for its investors for more than forty years.
Quantum Group of Funds is advised by Soros Fund Management, which also invests in public stock and fixed income markets, foreign exchange, currency, and commodity markets, and private equity and venture capital funds.
The corporation has large reported investments in a number of different industries, including retail, energy, transportation, and the financial sector.
The United Kingdom’s Central Bank
In 1992, Soros sold short an amount of British pounds equivalent to $10 billion USD. Because of the currency issues that occurred in the United Kingdom on “Black Wednesday” in 19992, George Soros was able to generate a profit of one billion dollars on a short bet virtually overnight. The phrase “the guy who broke the Bank of England” would become synonymous with George Soros.
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Philanthropy
George Soros, on reflecting on the achievements of his career, penned the following: “My success in the financial markets has given me a higher degree of independence than most other people.” While “most other people” could exploit their independence to live a life of careless luxury and boastful material pleasures, George Soros, who has overcome huge challenges and witnessed horrible social injustices, has fashioned a legacy of giving and goodwill through his life and work.
In 1979, Soros used the vast majority of his income to establish a charitable organization that would later be known as The Open Society Foundations. In reality, the foundation is more of a network of other foundations and partners spread across more than one hundred nations. His efforts have been especially weighty in the cause of strengthening democratic principles, individual rights, and the right to freedom of expression.
The Open Society Foundations began by awarding scholarships to black South Africans living under the apartheid regime. Subsequently, they funded many academic visits to the West and, throughout the 1980s, they promoted an open exchange of ideas in Communist Hungary while also providing support to the initiatives of a wide variety of cultural groups and movements.
In an effort to broaden what had been a narrow way of thinking in that region of the world, Soros established the Central European University after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He did this in the hopes of bringing in fresh ideas. In later years, Soros expanded his philanthropic work to encompass a wider range of countries and continents, including the United States of America, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Through his work, he strove to advance democratic principles as well as those of social fairness and accountability in various nations.
Throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Soros was an outspoken supporter of many different social justice initiatives. He was a firm belief that individual liberty should be available to everyone.
He criticized the hypocrisy of the so-called “War on Drugs” that is being waged by the government of the United States of America and claimed that it was “perhaps more destructive than the drug problem itself.” Drug users, people who work in the sex industry, and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community were some of the people who Soros tried to include in his charity contributions.
Soros was known for being an outspoken supporter of the underdog cause. Soros, who is vocal in his support for same-sex marriages as well as the drive to legalize marijuana for medical use, has been instrumental in the social development that has taken place thanks to the many contributions that his organization has made.
Since 1984, Soros has given more than $32 billion of his money to The Open Society Foundations. He has also backed a multitude of initiatives that aim to advance social freedoms, equality, justice, and government accountability.
He made a personal contribution of $500 million to aid those affected by the refugee situation in Syria.
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Net Worth
George Soros is a Hungarian-American entrepreneur, philanthropist, stock trader, currency speculator, and social activist who has amassed a net worth of $9 billion over the course of his career. As the creator of Soros Fund Management, George amassed his wealth and became wealthy. The company began operations in 1970 and went on to amass more than $30 billion in earnings for its shareholders over the course of four decades. At the present time, it is estimated that the company manages assets worth close to $45 billion.
