George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. He is famous for being a massively successful speculator and left wing political activist. During his time at the Quantum Fund, he earned the sobriquet of the man who broke the Bank of England – following his winning $10 billion speculative position short selling the British Pound. He made $1 billion on the trade and demonstrated the vulnerability of central banks.
He was born in Hungary in 1930, and having survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest, moved to London in 1947. Soros later graduated from the London School of Economics, where he was influenced by the work of Karl Popper. In 1956 he moved to the United States and founded an international investment fund.