Hedge-fund pioneer George Soros, one of the world’s most influential and widely-respected individual investors, is apparently retiring for good, a report said.
“The pound can at last sleep soundly. George Soros is finally putting away his calculator, and this time he means it”, the Times of London said.
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The 84-year-old Soros, who stopped managing clients’ money in 2011, told guests at a dinner he hosted in Davos that he was handing over the handling of his family’s fortune to chief investment officer Scott Bessent, according to Management Today.
“I have retired many times before but this time it’s final”’ he is reported to have said, according to the website. “I am devoting all my energies to what I call my political philanthropy and the two activities are not compatible.”
Soros founded his prototype hedge fund with Jim Rodgers back in 1973, but didn’t become famous until he made £1 billion betting against the Bank of England on Black Wednesday in 1993. He concluded that the U.K. had entered the putative European Exchange Rate Mechanism with sterling pegged at too high a rate, and he was right – despite spending £2 billion propping up the pound, and interest rate that rose briefly to 12%, John Major’s government rapidly conceded defeat, Management Today said.
It was a drubbing from which a generation of British politicians took one key message — that a European currency union was bad news for the country. So in the light of the Euro’s subsequent travails, Soros may have deserved his billion-pound payday for innoculating so many British leaders against the idea, the website said.
Even a retired man needs a hobby, so perhaps Soros will find time to take on a few more hapless central banks in the evenings and on weekends from now on, the website said.
