George Soros is a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist with a net worth of $7.2 billion as of May 2025. He is known for his significant philanthropic contributions, having donated over $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations. Approximately $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his initial fortune. Forbes recognized him as the "most generous giver" in 2020 based on the percentage of his net worth donated.
Recent news covers claims of George Soros being under house arrest amid a DOJ probe, also his son Alexander fleeing to Dubai. Soros is also described as Alabama's political target.
In 1924, George Soros's parents married.
On August 12, 1930, György Schwartz, who later became George Soros, was born in Hungary.
In August 1930, György Schwartz (George Soros) was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary.
Annaliese Witschak, George Soros's first wife, was born on January 3, 1934. She was an ethnic German immigrant and orphan of WWII.
In 1936, George Soros's family changed their name from Schwartz to Soros.
In March 1944, when George Soros was 13 years old, Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.
In 1944, Soros's family survived the Nazi occupation by purchasing documents stating they were Christians, and he posed as a Christian godson to a government official.
In 1945, George Soros survived the Siege of Budapest during which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.
In 1947, George Soros moved to the United Kingdom after surviving the Nazi occupation of Hungary as a teenager.
In 1951, Soros obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in philosophy from the London School of Economics.
In 1951, Soros was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in philosophy from the London School of Economics.
In 1954, George Soros began his financial career at the merchant bank Singer & Friedlander of London.
In 1954, Soros earned a Master of Science degree, also in philosophy, from the London School of Economics.
In 1956, George Soros moved to New York City and worked as an arbitrage trader for F. M. Mayer.
In 1959, Soros moved to Wertheim & Co. as an analyst of European securities.
In 1960, George Soros married Annaliese Witschak, an ethnic German immigrant who had been orphaned during World War II.
In 1963, George Soros concluded his role as an analyst of European securities at Wertheim & Co.
In 1963, Soros became a vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder.
In 1966, Soros started a fund with $100,000 of the firm's money to experiment with his trading strategies.
In 1967, Soros and Henry H. Arnhold established the First Eagle fund, an offshoot of Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder.
In 1969, George Soros set up his first hedge fund, Double Eagle.
In 1969, Soros set up the Double Eagle hedge fund with $4 million of investors' capital.
In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management and became its chairman, with several notable individuals holding senior positions at various times.
In 1973, George Soros launched his Quantum Endowment Fund. By January 2014 it had generated almost $42 billion in gains.
In 1973, Soros resigned from the management of the Double Eagle Fund due to perceived conflicts of interest and established the Soros Fund.
In 1973, Soros's experience as a vice president at Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder ended.
In 1973, the Double Eagle Fund had $12 million and formed the basis of the Soros Fund.
From 1979, George Soros began financially supporting dissidents in Eastern Europe, including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union, as an advocate of 'open societies'.
Starting in 1979, George Soros began donating to progressive and liberal political causes through the Open Society Foundations.
In 1980, George Soros received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Oxford.
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 1983, George Soros and Annaliese Witschak divorced after being married since 1960.
In 1983, George Soros married Susan Weber.
In 1984, George Soros founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary with a budget of $3 million, aiming to promote open societies and a free flow of ideas.
In 1987, George Soros predicted disaster in his book "The Alchemy of Finance."
In 1988, French financier Georges Pébereau asked Soros to join a group of investors to purchase shares in Société Générale. Ultimately, Soros declined the group effort, opting to accumulate shares in multiple French companies himself, including Société Générale.
In 1988, George Soros provided advice and support, including crucial data and studies, to the "No" campaign in the Chilean plebiscite, as stated by his friend Máximo Pacheco Matte. This support was instrumental in creating the campaign's influential television program and securing victory.
In 1989, the Commission des Opérations de Bourse (COB) investigated Soros's transaction in Société Générale for insider trading. Initial investigations found him innocent, but the case was reopened later.
In 1991, George Soros received a Doctor of Humane Letters from Yale University.
In the months leading up to September 1992, Soros built a substantial short position in pounds sterling due to recognizing the unfavorable position of the United Kingdom in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
On September 16, 1992, also known as Black Wednesday, Soros's fund had sold short more than $10 billion in pounds, profiting from the UK government's reluctance to raise interest rates.
On October 26, 1992, The New York Times quoted Soros stating his fund's position on Black Wednesday was worth almost $10 billion, and they had planned to sell even more.
In 1994, George Soros delivered a speech stating he had offered to help his mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide. In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act and proceeded to help fund its advertising campaign.
In 1995, George Soros received an honorary laurea degree in economics from the University of Bologna.
In 1995, George Soros was a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., which owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United.
On February 5, 1996, Soros was believed to have traded billions of Finnish markkas in anticipation of selling them short.
During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Soros was accused by the prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, of manipulating currency values.
In 1997, George Soros closed his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society".
In 1997, Soros Fund Management, noticing the discrepancy between trade and capital accounts, decided to sell short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit. Later in 1997, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused Soros of causing the financial crisis, which Soros denied, stating that they were buyers of the currency when it began to decline.
According to Alexander Soros, after his bar mitzvah in 1998, George Soros told him: "If you're serious about being Jewish, you might want to consider immigrating to Israel".
In 1998, George Soros predicted disaster in his book "The Crisis of Global Capitalism."
In 1998, George Soros stated in an interview with CBS News that he was not religious and did not believe in God.
In 1998, in his book The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, Soros explained his role in the Asian financial crisis.
In 1998, the President of Estonia, Lennart Meri, awarded George Soros the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, First Class.
In 1999, economist Paul Krugman criticized Soros's influence on financial markets.
In 2000, George Soros sought to improve the image of Ricardo Lagos, who was a presidential candidate at the time, among business circles.
In 2000, Washington Soccer L.P., the group that George Soros financially backed, lost the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United.
On November 11, 2003, in an interview with The Washington Post, George Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life". He would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat Bush "if someone guaranteed it".
From 1994 to 2003, the Project on Death in America, one of the Open Society Institute's projects, was active in its mission to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement".
In 2003, George Soros's book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", critiqued the Bush administration's "War on Terror" and was a polemic against the re-election of Bush.
In 2003, speaking before a conference of the Jewish Funders Network, George Soros suggested that the policies of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon, along with unintended consequences of his actions, were partially contributing to a new European antisemitism. He also said that Jews can overcome antisemitism by giving up on the tribalness.
Until the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros had not been a large donor to U.S. political campaigns. During the 2003-2004 election cycle, he donated $23,581,000 to 527 Groups aimed at defeating President George W. Bush.
On September 28, 2004, George Soros dedicated more money to the campaign against George W. Bush and kicked off his own multistate tour with a speech, "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush", delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Until the 2004 United States presidential election, Soros had not been a large donor to U.S. political campaigns. During the 2003-2004 election cycle, he donated $23,581,000 to 527 Groups aimed at defeating President George W. Bush.
In 2005, George Soros and Susan Weber divorced.
In 2005, George Soros was a minority partner in a group that attempted to purchase the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. This sparked potential political backlash.
On June 14, 2006, the French Supreme Court upheld a conviction against George Soros for insider trading related to his 1988 transaction in Société Générale, but reduced the penalty to €940,000.
In December 2006, George Soros appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing regarding his conviction of insider trading.
In 2006, Mahathir Mohamad met with George Soros and subsequently stated that he accepted that Soros had not been responsible for the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
In 2006, Soros discussed his early career and how he transitioned from an immigrant to a financier at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.
In a 2006 interview, Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs".
In May 2008, George Soros's book "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets" described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse.
After the 2008 financial crisis, George Soros's theories on reflexivity received more attention, ultimately becoming the focus of an issue of the Journal of Economic Methodology. These theories attempt to explain why markets tend to overshoot or undershoot when moving from one equilibrium state to another.
Circa 2008, an example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is the debt and equity of housing markets. Lenders began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses.
In 2008, George Soros donated $400,000 to help fund the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative, which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz of marijuana. Soros also funded similar measures in other states and provided funding to drug decriminalization groups such as the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation. Additionally, in 2008, he donated $1.4 million to support California's Proposition 5, a failed ballot measure aimed at expanding drug rehabilitation programs.
In 2008, George Soros met Tamiko Bolton, who he would later marry.
In 2008, George Soros was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame.
In 2008, George Soros's name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian association football team, but the club was not sold.
In February 2009, George Soros stated that the world financial system had effectively disintegrated and saw no near-term resolution to the crisis.
In June 2009, George 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 organizations.
In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be earmarked for underprivileged children, providing $200 per child aged 3 through 17 to parents with benefit cards.
In October 2009, George Soros stated in an interview that he believes marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students, noting he hasn't used it for years. He has been a major financier of the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization that promotes cannabis legalization, with approximately $5 million in annual contributions from one of his foundations.
In October 2009, in response to the Great Recession, George Soros founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a think tank composed of international economic, business, and financial experts tasked with investigating radical new approaches to organizing the international economic and financial system.
In 2009, Michelle Bachelet awarded George Soros the Bernardo O'Higgins Order of Merit as a gesture of gratitude for his "unwavering commitment to democracy and open societies."
In October 2010, George Soros donated $1 million to support California's Proposition 19.
In 2010, Reuters published a story clarifying that Soros was not a funder of Wall Street protests, following earlier reports of indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, the group that catalyzed the Occupy Wall Street protests. Both a Soros spokesman and Adbusters denied any contributions from Soros.
In July 2011, Soros announced he had returned funds from outside investors' money, valued at $1 billion, and instead invested funds from his $24.5 billion family fortune.
In October 2011, Reuters published a story clarifying that Soros was not a funder of Wall Street protests, following earlier reports of indirect financial links between Soros and Adbusters, the group that catalyzed the Occupy Wall Street protests. Both a Soros spokesman and Adbusters denied any contributions from Soros.
In October 2011, the European Court of Human Rights rejected George Soros's appeal regarding his insider trading conviction, stating he was aware of the risk of breaking insider trading laws.
As of 2011, the Quantum Fund had $25 billion in assets under management.
By 2011, Soros had donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes.
On August 21, 2012, it was reported that George Soros acquired roughly a 2% stake in English football club Manchester United through the purchase of 3 million of the club's Class-A shares.
On September 27, 2012, Soros donated $1 million to Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting President Barack Obama's reelection.
Since 2012, the Hungarian Fidesz government has labeled George Soros as an enemy of the state.
On June 15, 2013, George Soros' older brother, Paul Soros, a private investor and philanthropist, passed away.
On September 21, 2013, George Soros married Tamiko Bolton.
In October 2013, Soros donated $25,000 to Ready for Hillary, becoming a co-chairman of the super PAC's national finance committee.
In 2013, the Quantum Fund made $5.5 billion, making it the most successful hedge fund in history.
In January 2014, George Soros was ranked number 1 in LCH Investments list of top 20 managers, having posted gains of almost $42 billion since the launch of his Quantum Endowment Fund in 1973.
In June 2015, Soros donated $1 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action, which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
In December 2015, Soros donated $6 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action, supporting Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
In 2015, George Soros was the target of conspiracy theories that blamed him for being behind the European migrant crisis or importing migrants to European countries. The Hungarian government spent millions of dollars on a poster campaign demonizing Soros.
In 2015, the Hungarian government disagreed with George Soros's involvement in the 2015 European migrant crisis.
In 2015, the Quantum Fund announced it would inject $300 million to help finance the expansion of Fen Hotels, an Argentine hotel company, to develop 5,000 rooms.
In January 2016, at an economic forum in Sri Lanka, George Soros predicted a financial crisis akin to the 2008 financial crisis, based on the state of global currency, stock, and commodity markets as well as the sinking Chinese yuan.
In August 2016, Soros donated $2.5 million to the Super PAC Priorities USA Action, which supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
In 2016, George Soros stated that he doesn't deny Jews the right to a national existence but doesn't want to be a part of it. Hacked emails released in 2016 revealed that his Open Society Foundation aims to challenge Israel's policies and he has funded NGOs critical of Israeli policies, including those campaigning for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Since 2016, George Soros has donated sums exceeding $1 million to the campaigns of progressive criminal justice reform proponents through the Safety and Justice PAC in local district attorney elections.
In January 2017, the "Stop Operation Soros" (SOS) initiative was launched in Macedonia, aiming to present "questions and answers about the way Soros operates worldwide" and contribute to the "de-Soros-ization" of Macedonia.
In March 2017, six US senators sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson requesting an investigation into grants given by the State Department and USAID to groups funded by George Soros, while Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit regarding $5 million transferred to Soros's Open Society branch in Macedonia.
In July 2017, George Soros was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy (HonFBA).
In July 2017, a Hungarian billboard campaign backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which was considered anti-semitic, vilified George Soros as an enemy of the state with the slogan "Let's not allow Soros to have the last laugh." The campaign was estimated to have cost $21 million.
A 2017 study found that a grant program by George Soros, which awarded funding to over 28,000 scientists in the former Soviet republics, significantly increased scientific publications and encouraged scientists to remain in the science sector after the end of the Soviet Union.
By 2017, George Soros's donations totaled $12 billion "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world".
In 2017, Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz filed a $10-million lawsuit against George Soros, alleging that Soros influenced the government of Guinea to freeze Steinmetz's company BSG Resources out of iron ore mining contracts due to animus toward Israel. Soros called the suit "frivolous and entirely false".
In 2017, Larry Krasner was elected as the District Attorney of Philadelphia with the help of a $1.5 million ad campaign funded by George Soros.
On May 16, 2018, George Soros's Open Society Foundations announced they would move its office from Budapest to Berlin, citing an "increasingly repressive" environment in Hungary.
In October 2018, in addition to the pipe bomb sent to George Soros's home on October 22, similar bombs were mailed to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other Democrats and liberals.
On October 22, 2018, a pipe bomb was placed in the mailbox at George Soros's home in Katonah, New York, as part of the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts. The package was discovered by a caretaker, who removed it and notified authorities. It was photographed and exploded by the FBI, which launched an investigation.
On October 26, 2018, Cesar Sayoc Jr. was arrested in Aventura, Florida, on suspicion of mailing the bombs, including the one sent to George Soros' house.
As the 2018 election period started, the Hungarian government introduced public posters with a photo of George Soros to create hostility towards him, and prepared the "Stop Soros package" of laws against NGOs working with refugees.
George Soros was named the Financial Times Person of the Year for 2018, recognized as a standard bearer for liberal democracy.
In 2018, The New York Times reported that "conspiracy theories about him have gone mainstream, to nearly every corner of the Republican Party".
In a 2018 interview, Alex Soros explained that his father fights for an open society because in a non-Jewish state, a Jew can only feel safe when other minorities are protected, which is one of the most important driving forces behind his philanthropy.
In April 2019, George Soros was awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Courage and donated the prize money to the Hungarian Spectrum, an online English-language publication.
By July 2019, Soros had donated $5.1 million to Democracy PAC for the 2020 election cycle.
In August 2019, Cesar Sayoc was sentenced to 20 years in prison for mailing 16 pipe bombs to 13 victims, including George Soros. None of the devices exploded.
In July 2020, George Soros donated $100 million to Bard College to support the Center for Civic Engagement initiatives and the Open Society University Network.
In 2020, Forbes recognized Soros as the "most generous giver" based on the percentage of his net worth donated to philanthropic causes.
In 2020, George Soros was the largest donor supporting George Gascón for Los Angeles County District Attorney and gave $2 million to a PAC supporting Kim Foxx's campaign for Cook County State's Attorney.
In the second quarter of 2020, George Soros donated at least $500,000 to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, becoming one of the campaign's largest donors.
Soros launched a new super PAC called Democracy PAC for the 2020 election cycle, donating $5.1 million to it by July 2019.
In April 2021, George Soros pledged $500 million to the endowment of Bard College, marking one of the largest donations ever made to higher education in the United States.
In August 2021, George Soros donated $25 million to the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
In September 2022, George Soros made an additional $25 million donation to Bard College.
As of 2022, George Soros owned homes on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, in The Hamptons on Long Island, and in Katonah, New York, within Westchester County.
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.
In December 2023, George Soros was swatted during a period of similar harassment targeting American political figures.
In December 2023, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, accused George Soros of supporting pro-Palestinian organizations "that seek the destruction of the State of Israel as a Jewish state".
In January 2025, United States President Joe Biden awarded George Soros the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
As of May 2025, George Soros's net worth is US$7.2 billion, and he has donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations.
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