Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve is a non-fiction book by George Soros, released by John Wiley and Sons in 1995, that gives an insight into the financial theory, personal history, and political analysis of George Soros. The narrative proceeds in an interview-like style with Byron Wien, Managing Director of Morgan Stanley, and German Journalist Krisztina Koenen asking questions of Soros.
Content
Soros describes his career in finance and provides his perspective on investing and global finance, politics, and what he views as the new world order. He follows his life from Holocaust survivor and student of philosophy and finance at the London School of Economics, to his emergence as one of the more successful and powerful traders of the twentieth century. Soros tells the story of his extraordinarily successful Soros Fund Management, and its $12 Billion dollar Quantum Fund, which for years produced a remarkable average annual return of 30%.
Soros describes "Black Wednesday", the time he made 1 billion dollars selling the British pound short, as well as the roughly $600 million he once lost speculating on the yen in February 1994. In simple terms, "Black Wednesday", was a formal devaluation of the British pound by around 20% against the dollar, the German Mark, and other currencies that took place on September 16, 1992. Soros, in the two weeks prior to September 16, on behalf of his hedge fund, and backed by both large bank loans and a multitude of the fund's co-investors, acquired and sold around ten billion British Pounds. Other private investors, not associated with Soros's funds, followed suit. After the pound dropped around 10-20% against the Mark, Soros, on behalf of his hedge fund, claimed to have made an estimated profit of around 1 billion dollars. Balancing the criticism by many British citizens and economists that this move damaged the English economy, Soros advocates noted that he had invested heavily in British securities during this period, and during the nationalization of industries imposed by Margaret Thatcher, Soros's funds were heavily invested in English industries including Jaguar automobiles and British Telecom. More specifically, Soros biographer Robert Slater estimated that Soros invested $500 million in British stocks shortly before "Black Wednesday" in the first few weeks of September 1992, based on the assumption that Great Britain's equities would rise following the devaluation of its currency.
Philanthropy
Perhaps most significantly, Soros explains the motivation he had in creating his philanthropic organizations, the Soros Foundation and his Open Society Institute. Through these organizations, Soros initially worked to begin Open Societies in the Soviet Union, and in Eastern European countries, many still under Communist rule. Among other efforts, Soros and the Open Society Foundations gave grants to further scientific research in Russia, spent close to $1 billion founding Central European University with multiple campuses in Eastern Europe, and worked to further freedom of speech. Soros's foundations and philanthropy extended to his native Hungary, then Poland, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and the Balkans. By the early 90's Soros's foundations were active in eighteen countries including Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the new states of Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkistan.
Most notably in Russia during a period of Glasnost which included more transparency with America and Western Europe in the 1990s, Mikhail Gorbachev recommended Soros for the Nobel Prize for giving grants of $100 million to Soviet scientists when the state had no money to pay them, giving $100 million to free the teachings of Humanities in Universities from their adherence to Marxism–Leninism, and most notably spending $100 million for all thirty-three regional Universities in Russia to connect to the Internet. Soros, on behalf of his foundations, spent millions to combat a virulent strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis that was advancing in Russia, most notably in its prisons.