Fundacja im. Stefana Batorego

Annual Report 2002

About the Founder

George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930. He survived the Nazi occupation and left communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics in 1952. While a student at LSE, he became familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his professional and philanthropic activities.

In 1956, George Soros moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. He is currently the president and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, a private investment management firm that serves as principal advisor to the Quantum Group of Funds, a series of international investment vehicles. In July 2000, Soros merged his flagship Quantum Fund with the Quantum Emerging Growth Fund to form the Quantum Endowment Fund. The Quantum Fund is generally recognized as one of the most successful investment funds ever, returning an average 31 percent annually throughout its more than 30-year history.

George Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Today he is chairman of the Open Society Institute and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union — but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States — these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. In 1992, Soros founded Central European University, with its primary campus in Budapest.

George Soros is the author of seven books, most recently George Soros on Globalization (Public Affairs, March 2002). His other books include: The Alchemy of Finance (1987); Opening the Soviet System (1990); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); and Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000). His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world.

Soros has received honorary degrees from the New School for Social Research in New York City, the University of Oxford, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world. Also in 2000 Polish biggest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, awarded him the title of The Man of Year for his support to civil society movement in Eastern and Central Europe.