George Soros already has a successor. The most controversial investor and philanthropist of the last century, target of all the attacks of right-wing populisms that attribute mephistophelic powers to him (exactly as in his years as a financier it was the left who saw him as an agent of Evil, with a capital letter) will be replaced by the front of the non-profit entity that controls his donations, the Open Society Foundation, after his son, Alexander, commonly known as Alex.
The Open Society Foundation has one of the assets under management of 25,000 million dollars (more than 23,000 million euros), and in the coming years it will receive another25,000 million more, from the family office, that is, the manager that manages Soros' assets since he closed his hedge fund in 2011. Soros returned the money to his investors and limited himself to continue managing his fortune so as not to have to give information about his financial operations to the market regulator, which was one of the measures imposed on hedge funds by the government of Barack Obama - which the financier had supported and continued to support - to introduce some transparency in the international financial system after the hecatomb of subprime mortgages.
The news was uncovered on Sunday by the financial newspaper The Wall Street Journal, a media outlet owned by another billionaire heavily involved in politics to whom the global left attributes since the triumphs of George W. Bush and Donald Trump and Brexit: Rupert Murdoch. Given that Alex, his father, and his brother Jonathan - who has lost the battle for succession - speak to the Journal, it is conceivable that what the billions unite the most irreconcilable ideological differences. Another option is for the Murdochs and Soros to simply exchange notes about how to carry out a succession in an empire led by a dominant father figure who must dole out an unimaginable estate to a succession of children from different mothers.
Ideologically, Alex is like his father. It is situated in the realm of social democracy, secularism and liberal democracy, with emphasis on the defense of freedoms and other more controversial rights -- which a part of the population denies are rights -- such as abortion and euthanasia.
In certain things, the profile of the heir is different from both his father's and Jonathan's. The most obvious is the age: 37 years compared to 52 for the defeated aspirant and 92 for the patriarch. The second, his style. "I'm more political," he told the Journal, adding that he had recently met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, several senior officials in Joe Biden's administration, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Brazilian President Luis Ignacio "Lula" da Silva. It is difficult how you can be more political than George Soros, who has among his list of friends personalities as varied as Bill Clinton, Felipe González or the philosopher of the London School of Economics John Gray. But if Alex says it, it will be true.
Another difference: Alex is a practicing Jew and has visited Israel several times, unlike his father, who, although he escaped the Holocaust in his native Hungary, is an atheist and does not seem to have much sympathy for that country. Alex's childhood is also very different from that of his father and older brother. The first was not only about to end up being murdered in his childhood by the Nazis, but, when he emigrated to London, he sought a life as a chef before entering the London School of Economics, where he met the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, which has marked him enormously. All his life, Soros has been, first and foremost, a 'trader' – that is, someone who, no matter how much mathematical jargon he uses, tries to buy low and sell high – with intellectual pretensions.
That has led him to manufacture a series of pseudo-philosophical theories - especially that of "reflexivity" - that border between the absurd, the childish and the ridiculous, so that no academic or educational institution has dared to criticize seeing a man who earns and distributes millions as if such a thing. Jonathan belongs to the same school. Although he was born into a wealthy family - Soros in 1971 already had considerable wealth - it cannot be said that he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth, as they say in the US to speak of the rich 'by birth'. Indeed, he played a central role during the subprime mortgage crisis and the Eurocrisis, when Quantum, Soros' most famous fund, smoothly navigated turbulence that decimated competition.
Alex ex different. He was born in 1985 to George's second wife, at the height of the financial deregulation boom that caused the explosion of hedge funds. When he was 7 years old, his father 'broke' the Bank of Ingalterra, forced the pound out of the European Monetary System and made a billion dollars of the time in an epic 'trade' week. But that was far away for young Alex. Although he went to a very exclusive private school in Manhattan, he had a fat complex, and lived in a state of terror for his father - whom he did not see much - after one of his classmates, with typically childish sadism, told him to be careful not to be kidnapped.
His interest in finances, unlike Jonathan and his own father, is minuscule. Alex is an intellectual. And that is what seems to have convinced the old patriarch to give him the keys to the kingdom. That and the fact that, unlike Jonathan, Alex has never contradicted his father at Open Society meetings. At the head of the organization, however, it is likely to change this, but only at the margins. As a good American, Alex seems to be more interested in the United States than the rest of the world, which could be good news for Viktor Orban in Hungary, Andrzej Duda in Poland, and, of course, Vladimir Putin. But that doesn't mean he's weaker than his father. On the contrary. When, after Donald Trump's victory, the Open Society Foundation faced a possible politically motivated investigation by the US federal government, it was Alex who convinced the rest of the organization's board of trustees to increase its programs in countries like the US and in regions such as Latin America.
- Articles Pablo Pardo
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