George Soros, Hon FBA (born György Schwartz; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist. Born in Budapest, Soros survived Nazi Germany-occupied Hungary and immigrated to England in 1947. Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis.
Soros is a well-known supporter of progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundation. Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion.
He influenced the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and his extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists". Numerous American conservatives have promoted false claims that characterize Soros as a singularly dangerous "puppetmaster" behind a variety of alleged global plots, with The New York Times reporting that by 2018 these claims had "moved from the fringes to the mainstream" of Republican politics.