With a little over a year left to go until the UK is scheduled to break away from the European Union (EU), Hungarian investor George Soros refuses to let up in his fight against Brexit.
Soros has pledged another £100,000 to the Best For Britain campaign, founded by chief remainer Gina Miller, The Telegraph newspaper reports. He has promised to match donations up to £100,000, with over £45,000 donated already.
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Should the £100,000 goal be met, it would take his total contribution to the anti-Brexit group to £400,000.
Best for Britain aims to ensure that Britain gets the best possible outcome from the ongoing Brexit talks, be it to leave or remain in the union, but who is the $8bn man bankrolling the fight against a hard Brexit?
Who is George Soros?
Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930, before relocating to London to study at the London School of Economics.
After working his way around a number of London and New York based firms, Soros founded the Soros Fund Management in 1973.
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By GlobalDataProving to be an astute trader, Soros turned his fund into one of the most successful around.
Reuters reported in 2015 that Soros Fund Management had been producing an average annual rate of return of 20 percent for more than four decades.
He is well known as the man who “broke the Bank of England”. This is due to the huge gains that he made on “Black Wednesday” in September 1992.
At the time, Britain was signed up to the European Exchange Rate mechanism. This was essentially designed to stabilise European currencies ahead of the switch to a single union-wide currency.
However, speculators like Soros pushed the price of the pound down, forcing the UK to withdraw from the agreement. As the pound recovered, Soros reportedly made as much as $1bn at Britain’s expense.
By 2016 Soros’ fund had made gains of $41.8bn.
Fighting Trump and Brexit
However, Donald Trump’s surprising United States presidential election victory saw Soros make losses of $1bn in the same year, according to Business Insider.
The businessman has been a strong critic of Trump since the former reality television star announced his intentions to run for president.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Soros referred to the incoming president as “an imposter and con man and a would-be dictator.”
However, he has since turned his attention back to Brexit with deadline day looming.
Having proven to be a good judge of the implications of political turbulence in the past, Soros only predicts bad things for Britain outside of the EU.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Soros said:
“Britain, outside Europe, will lose much of its global influence. Economically, Britain will suffer because 45 years of successful integration with Europe will go into reverse. There is no such thing as a friendly divorce.”
Soros seems certain that this is the case. He will be backing the Best for Britain campaign through his Open Society Foundations non-profit.
OFS is funded by an $18bn donation made by Soros last year.
