Billionaire investor and liberal donor George Soros has handed over his multi-billion-dollar foundation to his son, Alexander Soros, who will now run his father’s philanthropic enterprise. Back in 1992, the now 92-year-old financier notably made $1 billion after betting against the British pound and “breaking the Bank of England.” He had previously claimed he does not wish to hand over his Open Society Foundations (OSF) to any of his five children.
George, however, has now named Alexander as chairman of ISF. “He’s earned it,” George said. Alexander, 37, said he was “more political” than his father and revealed his plans to continue to donate family money to left-leaning US political candidates, according to Wall Street Journal.
“We are going to double down on defending voting rights and personal freedom at home and supporting the cause of democracy abroad,”Alexander said. “As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it too.”
George Soros married thrice and has five children – Alexander, Andrea, Gregory, Robert and Jonathan. Alexander was raised in Katonah, New York. He went on to attend King Low Heywood Thomas in Stamford, Connecticut, and graduated from New York University in 2009. In 2018, he graduated with a PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley.
Alexander’s first major contribution to the Jewish Funds for Justice helped him establish himself as a philanthropist. He later also donated $200,000 to the Jewish Council for Education and Research. He established the ‘Alexander Soros Foundation’ in 2012, which promotes social justice and human rights. The organization notably funded the first-ever national statistical study of domestic workers – ‘Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work.’
Alexander had been deputy chair of OSF since 2017. The foundation directs about $1.5 billion every year to groups including those that back human rights. Alexander is part of the investment committee of the foundation, which is an overseer of Soros Fund Management.
“With my background, there are a lot of ways I could have gone astray,” said Alexander. “Instead I became a workaholic, and my life is my work.”
