Soros

NEW YORK -- The biggest hedge fund managers who bet on global stocks, bonds and currencies are trouncing the Standard & Poor's 500 index this year.Through Aug. 11, George Soros' $10.9 billion flagship Quantum Fund had climbed 21 percent after fees this year, up about 4 percentage points since mid-July. That's more than double the price appreciation for the S&P 500, which rose 9.6 percent in the period. A month ago, Soros was trailing the index.Julian Robertson's Tiger Management group of funds, with $21 billion in assets, climbed about 27 percent after fees, on average, through Aug. 13. Robertson is one of the few managers of his kind who outpaced the U.S. benchmark index this year and last.

Investment industry fuels fear of demise for Social SecurityThe Sun article "A meeting of minds on Social Security" (Dec. 7) treats as an undisputed fact the prediction that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2032, requiring a 25 percent cut in benefits. This is not a fact; it is a supposition, based on actuarial projections that have been challenged as too conservative.An air of crisis has been pumped up by people who see a chance to grab a chunk of Social Security tax receipts for themselves in the form of sales commissions on investment accounts that are proposed to replace the present system.

In one of its first steps to improve life in Baltimore, the local arm of billionaire George Soros' philanthropy has awarded almost $500,000 in fellowships to 10 area residents.The Open Society Institute-Baltimore has awarded "community fellowships" -- each worth $48,750 -- for the recipients to improve inner-city life in ways such as raising voices in song, raising vegetables or raising the consciousness of juvenile offenders.The 18-month fellowships, announced yesterday, are a key part of Soros' plan to spend $25 million in five years to help the poor in Baltimore.

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and financial speculator, pledged $6.25 million yesterday for better after-school programs for Baltimore children -- provided the money is matched by $12 million over the next three years.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke promptly offered $1 million in city funds for the first year's matching requirement, thus leaving $11 million to be raised from public and private sources.The funds are designated for the Safe and Sound Campaign to expand after-school activities.

Talk about a high-flying stock. Igen International Inc., a relatively unknown Gaithersburg biotechnology firm, has seen its share price zoom an astonishing 742 percent since April.Yesterday, shares jumped $4.5625 to an all-time high of $40 -- more than eight times its 52-week low of $4.75 of April 24. The fastest run-up in the company's stock price has occurred since Christmas, when shares traded at $12.75.Propelling the ascent is a recently signed deal with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. and a thumbs-up from two investment funds tied to investment guru George Soros.

On the second day of his first visit to Baltimore, billionaire George Soros described this region as a miniature version of the world, with much of the world's bounty, problems and promise.Just as developed nations enjoy a bigger share of global wealth than countries on the economic periphery, so is the Baltimore region split between the have-less and the have-more, Soros told members of the Greater Baltimore Alliance, an economic development group."Here, it is the center that is disadvantaged, and it is [necessary]

NEW YORK -- George Soros, the Hungarian-born American financier and philanthropist, said yesterday that he would spend as much as $500 million in the next three years in Russia trying to improve health care, expand educational opportunities and help retrain the military for civilian jobs.In a telephone interview from Moscow, Soros said he would announce the initiative in eight fields today. This latest gift would make him Russia's largest philanthropist and largest individual Western investor, as well as a donor whose presence rivals that of the United States, which gave Russia $95 million in foreign aid last year.

If you have a practical plan to help the poor in Baltimore, billionaire George Soros may have a $48,750 fellowship for you.The first initiative of his Open Society Institute -- Baltimore since he announced plans in August to spend $25 million here will award about 10 "community fellowships" for work "in service to disadvantaged communities" in the city.The 18-month fellowships will begin in June or July and are renewable for 18 months. The total dollar value of the commitment, with renewals, is about $1 million.

LONDON -- All the old jokes have been wheeled out here, the ones that start with skyscrapers and end with the punch line: ''It's raining brokers again tonight.''A financial crisis is always great drama, complete with pictures of panicking, shouting traders and a grave chorus of dark-suited experts punctuating the news bulletins.But the fact that the reaction to this week's stock market crash has slipped into the familiar routine of criticizing the financial markets as irrational and destructive should not obscure the fact that they play an ever more essential role.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's advocacy of drug treatment on demand has caught the attention of a major philanthropist who plans to spend at least $25 million in Baltimore over the next five years to promote economic development and social service programs.Next month, currency speculator George Soros will establish a branch office of his Open Society Institute in Baltimore. The institute, an international charitable foundation whose U.S. headquarters is in New York, is the latest national or international philanthropic organization to set up shop in Baltimore in the past decade.

It's taken on drug addiction and tackled school suspensions. It's helped dozens of social entrepreneurs start nonprofits in some of the dreariest corners of Baltimore and along the way forged strong bonds with the city's political, social and financial elite. And now, after a decade of work, the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, an experiment in social urban philanthropy, is celebrating. The organization that billionaire financier George Soros created to tackle some of the city's most intractable problems is turning 10. And it is on target to meet Soros' challenge of raising $20 million from local sources by 2010, which he would increase with $10 million more.

A gift from the charitable arm of Baltimore investment firm T. Rowe Price has put the Open Society Institute's fundraising campaign closer to the $20 million goal set by billionaire financier George Soros, who founded the institute nearly a decade ago and promised an additional $10 million if local residents also contributed. The institute has raised more than $7 million, including in recent months a $250,000 donation from the T. Rowe Price Associates Foundation and a $200,000 contribution from an anonymous donor, said Debra Rubino, OSI spokeswoman.

WASHINGTON - A House GOP committee chairman didn't mean to suggest that he would seek legislative redress against baseball if it selects a Washington Nationals ownership group that includes financier George Soros, an aide said yesterday. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who chairs the Government Reform Committee, was quoted Monday in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, saying that Major League Baseball could face a political fight if it selects Soros, who has bankrolled liberal causes.

When Diana Morris was tapped in 1997 to head the Open Society Institute's Baltimore office, she thought she would disperse $25 million to worthy causes here over five years and be done with it. Almost eight years later, Morris has been challenged by her boss, billionaire and OSI founder George Soros, to raise $20 million to keep the office open. Soros has already spent $50 million - twice the amount he originally promised - in the city he refers to as a "laboratory" for reform. Now, he's dangling an additional $10 million to tempt locals to step up. Morris - an attorney who worked for the Ford Foundation for 10 years in Africa and Europe - is in hot pursuit of the money.

Even before he arrived at City Hall yesterday to make official his $20 million challenge to Baltimore, billionaire George Soros was a tad closer to raising the funds needed to keep the local office of his Open Society Institute going. At least $1.4 million has been raised - most of it from the Annie E. Casey Foundation - since the campaign was announced last month. Soros, who opened OSI-Baltimore in 1998 with the goal of studying urban ills and solving them, has promised to pledge $10 million of his own money if locals can meet his challenge to raise $20 million.

PARIS - In a bizarre ending to a 14-year-old investigation, a French court convicted American financier George Soros yesterday of insider trading and fined him 2.2 million euros, or about $2.3 million. The verdict by the three-member bench came after a prosecutor recommended during a hearing last month that, at the minimum, Soros should be fined 2.2 million euros, the sum he is accused of having earned on what officials say were illegal transactions. In a statement, Soros, who was in New York yesterday, expressed his belief that the charges against him were "unfounded and without merit" and said he was "astonished and dismayed by the court's ruling."

It didn't take long for billionaire philanthropist George Soros to ignore the power players surrounding him at an event in his honor yesterday -- and to head directly into a conversation with the kids he is trying to help. Taking a tour of Baltimore's Living Classrooms Foundation -- one of the nonprofit organizations funded by the Baltimore branch of his Open Society Institute -- Soros stopped to talk to three young men working in a foundation program to teach juvenile offenders carpentry skills.

On the second day of his first visit to Baltimore, billionaire George Soros described this region as a miniature version of the world, with much of the world's bounty, problems and promise.Just as developed nations enjoy a bigger share of global wealth than countries on the economic periphery, so is the Baltimore region split between the have-less and the have-more, Soros told members of the Greater Baltimore Alliance, an economic development group."Here, it is the center that is disadvantaged, and it is [necessary]

Investment industry fuels fear of demise for Social SecurityThe Sun article "A meeting of minds on Social Security" (Dec. 7) treats as an undisputed fact the prediction that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2032, requiring a 25 percent cut in benefits. This is not a fact; it is a supposition, based on actuarial projections that have been challenged as too conservative.An air of crisis has been pumped up by people who see a chance to grab a chunk of Social Security tax receipts for themselves in the form of sales commissions on investment accounts that are proposed to replace the present system.

George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and financial speculator, pledged $6.25 million yesterday for better after-school programs for Baltimore children -- provided the money is matched by $12 million over the next three years.Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke promptly offered $1 million in city funds for the first year's matching requirement, thus leaving $11 million to be raised from public and private sources.The funds are designated for the Safe and Sound Campaign to expand after-school activities.