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81-636: American financier George Soros invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the company. He later called it "the worst investment he's ever made". The company was founded in accordance with Presidential Decree №1989 " On Specific Features of State Management of the Public Switched Network in the Russian Federation " dated October 10, 1994, and Government Resolution №1297 dated November 25, 1994, and Government Resolution №742 dated July 24, 1995. Svyazinvest's charter capital

162-631: A Reuters story, "Soros: not a funder of Wall Street Protests ", was published after several commentators pointed out errors in an earlier Reuters story headlined "Who's Behind the Wall St. Protests?" with a lead stating that the Occupy Wall Street movement "may have benefited indirectly from the largesse of one of the world's richest men [Soros]". Reuters's follow-up article also reported a Soros spokesman and Adbusters ' co-founder Kalle Lasn both saying that Adbusters—the reputed catalyst for

243-439: A Jewish wife in hiding. On one occasion, rather than leave the 14-year-old alone, the official took Soros with him while completing an inventory of a Jewish family's confiscated estate. Tivadar saved not only his immediate family, but also many other Hungarian Jews, and Soros later wrote that 1944 had been "the happiest [year] of his life", for it had given him the opportunity to witness his father's heroism. In 1945, Soros survived

324-695: A cash auction without any investment terms. In November 1999 Svyazinvest's board of directors amended the company charter and turned it into a management company. As part of the measures to assign the status of a management company to Svyazinvest work got under way to improve procedures to manage associates, specifically by consolidating companies located in one region. In 2004, George Soros sold his stake in Svyazinvest to Len Blavatnik for $ 650 million. In April 2011, Svyazinvest subsidiaries were transferred to Rostelecom. In May 2011 with Igor Shchyogolev 's support, Alexander Trubetskoy became chairman of

405-554: A clerk and later moved to the arbitrage department. A fellow employee, Robert Mayer, suggested he apply at his father's brokerage house, F.M. Mayer of New York. In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer (1956–59). He specialized in European stocks, which were becoming popular with U.S. institutional investors following the formation of the Coal and Steel Community , which later became

486-757: A co-chairman of the super PAC's national finance committee. In June 2015, he donated $ 1 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action , which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race . He donated $ 6 million to the PAC in December 2015 and $ 2.5 million in August 2016. Soros launched a new super PAC called Democracy PAC for the 2020 election cycle . By July 2019, he had donated $ 5.1 million to it. Since 2016, Soros has been donating sums exceeding $ 1 million to

567-843: A huge short position in pounds sterling for months leading up to the Black Wednesday of September 1992. Soros had recognized the unfavorable position of the United Kingdom in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism . For Soros, the rate at which the United Kingdom was brought into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism was too high, their inflation was also much too high (triple the German rate), and British interest rates were hurting their asset prices. By September 16, 1992,

648-651: A large part of their 20% performance fees, thereby expanding their stake. By 1981, the fund had grown to $ 400m, and then a 22% loss in that year and substantial redemptions by some of the investors reduced it to $ 200m. In July 2011, Soros announced that he had returned funds from outside investors' money (valued at $ 1 billion) and instead invested funds from his $ 24.5 billion family fortune, due to changes in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, which he felt would compromise his duties of confidentiality to his investors. The fund had at that time averaged over 20% per year compound returns. In 2013,

729-520: A local currency that is pegged to the U.S. dollar or the New Zealand dollar . The Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (in Cyprus ) use the euro. Since decimalisation on Decimal Day in 1971, the pound has been divided into 100 pence (denoted on coinage, until 1981, as "new pence"). The symbol for the penny is "p"; hence an amount such as 50p (£0.50) properly pronounced "fifty pence"

810-399: A penny", "two and a penny", etc. 5 shillings, for example, was written as "5 s ." or, more commonly, "5/–" (five shillings, no pence). Various coin denominations had, and in some cases continue to have, special names, such as florin (2/–), crown (5/–), half crown (2/6 d ), farthing ( 1 ⁄ 4 d ), sovereign (£1) and guinea (21s, 21/–, £1–1–0 or £1.05 in decimal notation). By

891-531: A profit of $ 1 billion, during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated the General Theory of Reflexivity for capital markets , to provide insights into asset bubbles and fundamental / market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks. Soros supports progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through

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972-543: A railway porter and as a waiter, and once received £40 from a Quaker charity. Soros would sometimes stand at Speakers' Corner lecturing about the virtues of internationalism in Esperanto , which he had learned from his father. Soros obtained his Bachelor of Science in philosophy in 1951 and a Master of Science in philosophy in 1954 from the London School of Economics. After graduating, he wanted to stay in

1053-692: A special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well." In 1997, Soros closed his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $ 3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". According to The New York Times 1997, the Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control

1134-476: A variety of jobs and I ended up selling fancy goods on the seaside, souvenir shops, and I thought, that's really not what I was cut out to do. So, I wrote to every managing director in every merchant bank in London, got just one or two replies, and eventually that's how I got a job in a merchant bank." In 1954, Soros began his financial career at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander of London. He worked as

1215-545: A vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder resulted in little enthusiasm for the job; business was slack following the introduction of the Interest Equalization Tax , which undermined the viability of Soros's European trading. He spent the years from 1963 to 1966 with his main focus on the revision of his philosophy dissertation. In 1966, he started a fund with $ 100,000 of the firm's money to experiment with his trading strategies. In 1969, Soros set up

1296-508: Is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge") and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir met with Soros and afterward stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the crisis. In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered , Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows: The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997

1377-417: Is often pronounced "fifty pee" /fɪfti piː/. The old sign d was not reused for the new penny in order to avoid confusion between the two units. A decimal halfpenny ( ⁠ 1 / 2 ⁠ p, worth 1.2 old pennies) was issued until 1984 but was withdrawn due to inflation . Before decimalisation in 1971 , the pound was divided into 20 shillings , and each shilling into 12 pence , making 240 pence to

1458-615: Is the central bank for sterling, issuing its own banknotes and regulating issuance of banknotes by private banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Sterling banknotes issued by other jurisdictions are not regulated by the Bank of England; their governments guarantee convertibility at par . Historically, sterling was also used to varying degrees by the colonies and territories of the British Empire . There are various theories regarding

1539-578: Is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £ ) is the main unit of sterling, and the word pound is also used to refer to the British currency generally, often qualified in international contexts as the British pound or the pound sterling . Sterling is the world's oldest currency in continuous use since its inception. In 2022, it

1620-599: The Central European University in his Hungarian hometown. Soros's extensive funding of political causes has made him a " bugaboo of European nationalists ". Numerous far-right theorists have promoted claims that characterize Soros as a dangerous "puppet master" behind alleged global plots. Criticisms of Soros, who is of Jewish descent , have often been called antisemitic . In 2018, The New York Times reported that " conspiracy theories about him have gone mainstream, to nearly every corner of

1701-627: The Common Market . In 1959, after three years at F. M. Mayer, Soros moved to Wertheim & Co. He planned to stay for five years, enough time to save $ 500,000, after which he intended to return to England to study philosophy. He worked as an analyst of European securities until 1963. During this period, Soros developed the theory of reflexivity to extend the ideas of his tutor at the London School of Economics , Karl Popper . Reflexivity posits that market values are often driven by

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1782-598: The Open Society Foundations . Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $ 11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $ 12 billion. He influenced the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to

1863-646: The Republican Party ". György Schwartz was born on 12 August 1930 in Budapest in the Kingdom of Hungary to a prosperous non-observant Jewish family, who, like many upper-middle class Hungarian Jews at the time, were uncomfortable with their roots. Soros has wryly described his home as a Jewish antisemitic home. The family of his mother Erzsébet (also known as Elizabeth) operated a successful silk store. His father Tivadar (also known as Teodoro Ŝvarc)

1944-496: The Siege of Budapest , in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city. George and his mother also spent some time hiding with the family of Elza Brandeisz and even attended their Lutheran church with them. When he was 17, Soros relocated to Paris before eventually moving to England. There he became a student at the London School of Economics . While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper , Soros worked as

2025-485: The devaluation that he would borrow nearly $ 15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell." Soros was believed to have traded billions of Finnish markkas on February 5, 1996, in anticipation of selling them short. The markka had been put floating as a result of the early 1990s depression . The Bank of Finland and the Finnish Government commented at

2106-421: The late-2000s recession , Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess". In Soros's view, the markets' moods—a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which

2187-477: The occupation . Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis : The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper ... I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell

2268-690: The "most generous giver" (in terms of percentage of net worth). He is a resident of New York . Born in Budapest to a non-observant Jewish family, Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and moved to the United Kingdom in 1947. He studied at the London School of Economics and was awarded a BSc in philosophy in 1951, and then a Master of Science degree, also in philosophy, in 1954. Soros started his career working in British and American merchant banks , before setting up his first hedge fund , Double Eagle, in 1969. Profits from this fund provided

2349-657: The 1950s, coins of Kings George III , George IV and William IV had disappeared from circulation, but coins (at least the penny) bearing the head of every British monarch from Queen Victoria onwards could be found in circulation. Silver coins were replaced by those in cupro-nickel in 1947, and by the 1960s the silver coins were rarely seen. Silver/cupro-nickel sixpences, shillings (from any period after 1816) and florins (2 shillings) remained legal tender after decimalisation (as 2½p, 5p and 10p respectively) until 1980, 1990 and 1993 respectively, but are now officially demonetised. The pound sterling emerged after

2430-469: The Bank of England has exclusively used the single bar variant since 1975. Historically, a simple capital L (in the historic black-letter typeface, L {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {L}}} ) placed before the numerals, or an italic l. after them, was used in newspapers, books and letters. The Royal Mint was still using this style of notation as late as 1939. The glyphs Ł and Ⱡ may occasionally be encountered. Use of

2511-1035: The Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society". In June 2009, Soros donated $ 100 million to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the Great Recession on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations. Pounds sterling King Charles III [REDACTED] William, Prince of Wales [REDACTED] Charles III ( King-in-Council ) [REDACTED] Starmer ministry ( L ) Keir Starmer ( L ) Angela Rayner ( L ) ( King-in-Parliament ) [REDACTED] Charles III [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] The Lord Reed The Lord Hodge Andrew Bailey Monetary Policy Committee Sterling ( ISO code : GBP )

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2592-733: The Double Eagle hedge fund with $ 4m of investors' capital including $ 250,000 of his own money. It was based in Curaçao , Dutch Antilles . Double Eagle itself was an offshoot of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder's First Eagle fund established by Soros and that firm's chairman Henry H. Arnhold in 1967. In 1973, the Double Eagle Fund had $ 12 million and formed the basis of the Soros Fund. George Soros and Jim Rogers received returns on their share of capital and 20 percent of

2673-457: The League's money was not frequently debased like that of England, English traders stipulated to be paid in pounds of the "Easterlings", which was contracted to "'sterling". The OED dismisses this theory as unlikely, since the stressed first syllable would not have been elided. Encyclopædia Britannica states that the (pre-Norman) Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had silver coins called sterlings and that

2754-556: The Quantum Fund made $ 5.5 billion, making it again the most successful hedge fund in history. Since its inception in 1973, the fund has generated $ 40 billion. The fund announced in 2015 that it would inject $ 300 million to help finance the expansion of Fen Hotels, an Argentine hotel company. The funds will develop 5,000 rooms over the next three years throughout various Latin American countries. Soros had been building

2835-505: The Roman libra , solidus , and denarius . Notable style guides recommend that the pound sign be used without any abbreviation or qualification to indicate sterling (e.g., £12,000). The ISO 4217 code "GBP" (e.g., GBP 12,000) may also be seen should disambiguation become necessary. The ISO 4217 currency code for sterling is "GBP", formed from the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for

2916-591: The Société Générale and had no insider knowledge of the business, but he did possess knowledge that a group of investors was planning a takeover attempt. Initial investigations found Soros innocent, and no charges were brought forward. However, the case was reopened a few years later, and the French Supreme Court confirmed the conviction on June 14, 2006, although it reduced the penalty to €940,000. Soros denied any wrongdoing, saying news of

2997-957: The Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratization and that all the NGOs that gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power. Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan . Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey , said in an interview 2006 that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs ... Last year Russia passed

3078-468: The Soros Fund and gave investors in the Double Eagle Fund the option of transferring to that or staying with Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder. It was later renamed the Quantum Fund , after the physical theory of quantum mechanics . By that time the value of the fund had grown to $ 12m, only a small proportion of which was Soros's own money. He and Jim Rogers reinvested their returns from the fund, and also

3159-595: The United Kingdom ("GB") and the first letter of "pound". In historical sources and some specialist banking uses, the abbreviation stg (in various styles) has been used to indicate sterling. Many stocks on the London Stock Exchange are quoted in penny sterling, using the unofficial code "GBX". The exchange rate of sterling against the US dollar is referred to as "cable" in the wholesale foreign exchange markets . The origins of this term are attributed to

3240-607: The United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527). The groups aimed to defeat President George W. Bush . After Bush's reelection, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance , which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America. In August 2009, Soros donated $ 35 million to the state of New York to be earmarked for underprivileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at

3321-601: The adoption of the Carolingian monetary system in England c.  800 . Here is a summary of changes to its value in terms of silver or gold until 1816. The pound was a unit of account in Anglo-Saxon England . By the ninth century it was equal to 240 silver pence . The accounting system of dividing one pound into twenty shillings , a shilling into twelve pence, and a penny into four farthings

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3402-655: The bet was estimated at over $ 1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England". The estimated cost of Black Wednesday to the UK Treasury was £3.4 billion. Stanley Druckenmiller , who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound and stated: "[Soros's] contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position". On October 26, 1992, The New York Times quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $ 10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before

3483-516: The board and Vadim Semyonov, who is a citizen of both Canada and Russia , became CEO of Svyazinvest on 3 November 2010 replacing Evgeny Yurchenko because Yurchenko refused to support Konstantin Malofeev 's decisions calling Malofeev "Russia's great raider" ( Russian : «великим рейдером России» ). Svyazinvest is three-quarters owned by Rosproperty and one-quarter owned by Rostelecom . As of June 29, 2006, Svyazinvest's Board of Directors included

3564-501: The campaign's largest donors. For the 2022 United States elections , Soros was the country's largest donor. He donated $ 128.5 million to support the Democratic Party in the election cycle. According to Waldemar A. Nielsen, an authority on American philanthropy, "[Soros] has undertaken... nothing less than to open up the once-closed communist societies of Eastern Europe to a free flow of ideas and scientific knowledge from

3645-629: The campaigns of progressive criminal justice reform proponents through the Safety and Justice PAC in local district attorney elections. In many districts, such large contributions were unprecedented and the campaigning strategy was "turned on its head" with a focus on incarceration, police misconduct and bail system, according to the Los Angeles Times . Larry Krasner was elected as the District Attorney of Philadelphia with

3726-478: The common phrase "quids in"). Its origin is unknown: possible derivations include scudo , the name for a number of currency units used in Italy until the 19th century, introduced by Italian immigrants; or from Latin quid via the common phrase quid pro quo , literally, "what for what", or, figuratively, "An equal exchange or substitution". The term "nicker" (also both singular and plural) may also refer to

3807-468: The compound noun pound sterling was derived from a pound (weight) of these sterlings. The English word pound derives from the Latin expression lībra pondō , in which lībra is a noun meaning 'pound' and pondō is a noun, in the ablative case , meaning 'by weight'. The currency sign for the pound unit of sterling is £ , which (depending on typeface) may be drawn with one or two bars :

3888-483: The crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline—we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.) In 1999, economist Paul Krugman

3969-447: The day of Black Wednesday, Soros's fund had sold short more than $ 10 billion in pounds , profiting from the UK government's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or float its currency. Finally, the UK withdrew from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound. Soros's profit on

4050-430: The fact that from the mid-19th century, the sterling/dollar exchange rate was transmitted via transatlantic cable. Historically almost every British coin had a widely recognised nickname, such as "tanner" for the sixpence and "bob" for the shilling . Since decimalisation these have mostly fallen out of use except as parts of proverbs. A common slang term for the pound unit is " quid " (singular and plural, except in

4131-403: The fallible ideas of participants, not only by the economic fundamentals of the situation. Ideas and events influence each other in reflexive feedback loops. Soros argued that this process leads to markets having procyclical "virtuous" or "vicious" cycles of boom and bust, in contrast to the equilibrium predictions of more standard neoclassical economics. From 1963 to 1973, Soros's experience as

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4212-452: The first Occupy Wall Street protests—had never received any contributions from Soros, contrary to Reuters's earlier story that reported that "indirect financial links" existed between the two as late as 2010. On September 27, 2012, Soros announced that he was donating $ 1 million to the super PAC backing President Barack Obama 's reelection Priorities USA Action . In October 2013, Soros donated $ 25,000 to Ready for Hillary , becoming

4293-608: The following as members: As of June 29, 2006, the Management Board included the following as members: George Soros George Soros HonFBA (born György Schwartz ; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. As of October 2023 , he had a net worth of US$ 6.7 billion, having donated more than $ 32 billion to the Open Society Foundations , of which $ 15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. In 2020, Forbes called Soros

4374-649: The group effort, opting to personally move forward with his strategy of accumulating shares in four French companies: Société Générale, as well as Suez, Paribas, and the Compagnie Générale d'Électricité . In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB, the French stock exchange regulatory authority) conducted an investigation of whether Soros's transaction in Société Générale should be considered insider trading . Soros had received no information from

4455-552: The help of a $ 1.5 million ad campaign funded by Soros in 2017. Soros was the largest donor supporting the campaign of George Gascón for Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, contributing $ 2.25 million to superPACs in Gascón's favor. Soros gave $ 2 million to a PAC supporting Kim Foxx 's campaign for Cook County State's Attorney in 2020. In the second quarter of 2020, Soros gave at least $ 500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden , becoming one of

4536-509: The international economic and financial system. In 1988, Soros was contacted by a French financier named Georges Pébereau, who asked him to participate in an effort to assemble a group of investors to purchase a large number of shares in Société Générale , a leading French bank that was part of a privatization program (something instituted by the new government under Jacques Chirac ). Soros eventually decided against participating in

4617-491: The letter ⟨L⟩ for pound derives from medieval Latin documents: "L" was the abbreviation for libra , the Roman pound (weight), which in time became an English unit of weight defined as the tower pound . A "pound sterling" was literally a tower pound (weight) of sterling silver . In the British pre-decimal ( duodecimal ) currency system, the term £sd (or Lsd) for pounds, shillings and pence referred to

4698-575: The markets look at reality—"actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles". In reaction to the Great Recession , he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think tank composed of international economic, business, and financial experts, who are mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organizing

4779-523: The new name because it is a palindrome and because of its meaning. In Hungarian, soros means "next"; in Esperanto it means "will soar". Soros was 13 years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary . The Nazis barred Jewish children from attending school, and Soros and the other schoolchildren were made to report to the Judenrat (" Jewish Council "), which had been established during

4860-533: The newly independent countries. A 2017 study found that a grant program by George Soros which awarded funding to over 28,000 scientists in the former Soviet republics shortly after the end of the Soviet Union "more than doubled publications on the margin, significantly induced scientists to remain in the science sector, and had long-lasting [beneficial] impacts". His funding of pro-democratic programs in Georgia

4941-597: The origin of the word "sterling". The Oxford English Dictionary states that the "most plausible" etymology is a derivation from the Old English steorra for "star" with the added diminutive suffix -ling , to yield "little star". The reference is to the silver penny used in Norman England in the twelfth century, which bore a small star. Another theory holds that the Hanseatic League

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5022-414: The outside world". From 1979, as an advocate of ' open societies ', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union . In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary with a budget of $ 3 million. Since the fall of the Soviet Union , Soros's funding has played an important role in

5103-438: The people that if they report they will be deported". I'm not sure to what extent he knew they were going to be gassed. I did what my father said. Soros did not return to that job; his family survived the war by purchasing documents to say that they were Christians. Later that year at age 14, Soros posed as the Christian godson of an official of the collaborationist Hungarian government's Ministry of Agriculture, who himself had

5184-411: The pound. The currency of all the Crown Dependencies ( Guernsey , Jersey , Isle of Man ) and a third of British Overseas Territories ( British Antarctic Territory ; Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ; Gibraltar ; and Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha ) is either sterling or pegged to sterling at par. The other British Overseas Territories have

5265-497: The pound. The symbol for the shilling was " s ." – not from the first letter of "shilling", but from the Latin solidus . The symbol for the penny was " d .", from the French denier , from the Latin denarius (the solidus and denarius were Roman coins). A mixed sum of shillings and pence, such as 3 shillings and 6 pence, was written as "3/6" or "3 s . 6 d ." and spoken as "three and six" or "three and sixpence" except for "1/1", "2/1" etc., which were spoken as "one and

5346-430: The profits each year. In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman. Among those who held senior positions there at various times were Jim Rogers, Stanley Druckenmiller , Mark Schwartz, Keith Anderson, and Soros's two sons. In 1973, due to perceived conflicts of interest limiting his ability to run the two funds, Soros resigned from the management of the Double Eagle Fund. He then established

5427-419: The rate of $ 200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $ 140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act . Soros was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress , and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. In October 2011,

5508-513: The reign of King Offa of Mercia (757–796), who introduced a "sterling" coin made by physically dividing a Tower pound (5,400 grains, 349.9 grams) of silver into 240 parts. In practice, the weights of the coins were not consistent, 240 of them seldom added up to a full pound; there were no shilling or pound coins and these units were used only as an accounting convenience . Halfpennies and farthings worth 1 ⁄ 2 and 1 ⁄ 4 penny respectively were also minted, but small change

5589-469: The seed money for Soros Fund Management , his second hedge fund, in 1970. Double Eagle was renamed Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised. At its founding, Quantum Fund had $ 12 million in assets under management , and as of 2011 it had $ 25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth. Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England " as a result of his short sale of US$ 10 billion worth of pounds sterling , which made him

5670-459: The takeover was public knowledge and it was documented that his intent to acquire shares of the company predated his own awareness of the takeover. In December 2006, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights on various grounds, including that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing. On the basis of Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights , stating that no person may be punished for an act that

5751-415: The time they believed that a "conspiracy" was impossible. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis , the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad , accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. With a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It

5832-631: The university and work as a professor, but his grades were not high enough, prompting him to work for an investment firm in London. In a discussion at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 2006, Alvin Shuster, former foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times , asked Soros, "How does one go from an immigrant to a financier? ... When did you realize that you knew how to make money?". Soros replied, "Well, I had

5913-611: Was a lawyer and a well-known Esperanto author who edited the Esperanto literary magazine Literatura Mondo and raised his son to speak the language. Tivadar had also been a prisoner of war during and after World War I until he escaped from Russia and rejoined his family in Budapest. His parents married in 1924. In 1936, Soros's family changed their name from the German-Jewish "Schwartz" to "Soros", as protective camouflage in increasingly antisemitic Hungary. Tivadar liked

5994-470: Was adopted from the livre carolingienne system introduced by Charlemagne to the Frankish Empire . The penny was abbreviated to "d", from denarius , the Roman equivalent of the penny; the shilling to "s" from solidus (written with a long s , ſ , later evolving into a simple slash , / ); and the pound to "L" (subsequently £ ) from Libra or Livre . The origins of sterling lie in

6075-744: Was considered by Georgian nationalists to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution , although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated". Alexander Lomaia , secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former executive director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation ( Soros Foundation ), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $ 2.5 million. Former Georgian foreign minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like

6156-429: Was critical of Soros's effect on financial markets: [N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not only move money in anticipation of a currency crisis, but actually do their best to trigger that crisis for fun and profit. These new actors on the scene do not yet have a standard name; my proposed term is "Soroi". In an interview concerning

6237-638: Was formed by consolidating state-owned stakes in 85 joint stock telecommunications companies. Svyazinvest passed official state registration on September 18, 1995. In accordance with Resolution №618 issued by the Russian government on May 23, 1997, the Russian Federal Property Fund and the State Committee of the Russian Federation for State Property Management put up for sale an interest equaling 25% + 1 share in Svyazinvest at

6318-487: Was not a criminal offense at the time that it was committed, the court agreed to hear the appeal. In October 2011, the court rejected his appeal in a 4–3 decision, saying that Soros had been aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws. Until the 2004 presidential election, Soros had not been a large donor to U.S. political campaigns. According to OpenSecrets , during the 2003–2004 election cycle, Soros donated $ 23,581,000 to various 527 Groups (tax-exempt groups under

6399-650: Was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity ... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing

6480-533: Was the fourth-most-traded currency in the foreign exchange market , after the United States dollar , the euro , and the Japanese yen . Together with those three currencies and the renminbi , it forms the basket of currencies that calculate the value of IMF special drawing rights . As of late 2022, sterling is also the fourth most-held reserve currency in global reserves . The Bank of England

6561-523: Was the origin of its definition, manufacture, and name: the German name for the Baltic is Ostsee ( ' East Sea ' ) and from this the Baltic merchants were called Osterlings ( ' Easterlings ' ). In 1260, Henry III granted them a charter of protection and land for their kontor , the Steelyard of London , which by the 1340s was also called Esterlingeshalle ( ' Easterlings Hall ' ). Because

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