THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: THE PHILANTHROPIST; And for His Next Feat, a Billionaire Sets Sights on Bush

Mr. Soros says his motive is not power or position, but the decades and $4 billion he has spent to promote civil liberties in former authoritarian regimes. As a child, he survived the Holocaust in his native Hungary by adopting an assumed identity and, later, he slipped away from the Communists. Those experiences shaped his world view, both as a financier betting on uncertainty and as a philanthropist.

…

Starting from scratch, Mr. Soros became a billionaire by watching global economic and political trends and then placing huge bets in securities markets. The $1 billion he won in 1992 by betting against the Bank of England that the pound would fall made him a tabloid fixture in London and earned him the title ”The man who broke the Bank of England.”