Source: Wikipedia
Soros is estimated currently to be worth around $11.0 billion in net worth; he is ranked by Forbes as the 29th-richest person in the United States and has given away $6 billion to charities and his favorite causes since 1979.[1]
Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also one of three initial funders of Center for American Progress, and is represented on the board.[4] His funding and organization of Georgia‘s Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success, although Soros said his role has been greatly exaggerated. In the United States, he is known for having donated large sums of money in a failed effort to defeat President George W. Bush‘s bid for re-election in 2004.
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Source: Mail Foreign Service (Mail Online)
‘I’m having a very good crisis,’ says Soros as hedge fund managers make billions off recession
A hedge fund manager who predicted the global credit crunch has said the financial crisis has been ‘stimulating’ and the culmination of his life’s work.
George Soros, who predicted the global financial crisis twice before, was one of the few people to anticipate and prepare for the current economic collapse.
Mr Soros said his prediction meant he was better able to brace his Quantum investment fund against the gloabal storm.
But other investors failed to take notice of his prediction and his decision to come out of retirement in 2007 to manage the fund made him $US2.9 billion.
And while the financial crisis continued to deepen across the globe, the 78-year-old still managed to make $1.1 billion last year.
‘It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work,’ he told national newspaper The Australian.
Soros is one of 25, top hedge fund managers from across Wall Street who have defied the credit crunch crisis to reap a total of $11.6billion (£7.9bn) last year.
The managers made their profit by trading above the pain in the markets, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha Magazine.
Former maths professor James H. Simons, who has made billions in hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, earned $2.5 billion running computer-driven trading strategies.
And John A. Paulson, who made his fortune by betting against the housing market, came in second earning $2 billion.
The managers made the profit in a year when losses were recorded at two of every three hedge funds and when hedge funds lost an average of 18 percent, according to the New York Times.