Rethinking The Soros Fortune

The head of the legendary asset management shop has pulled back from risk

- Katherine Burton & Katia Porzecanski

In November, Dawn Fitzpatrick, chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, was being interviewed on a finance podcast called Capital Allocators. At the top of the program, the host sent out an appeal: “Dawn contends that Soros has a uniquely attractive platform for the right type of leading investors to apply their trade,” he said before reciting an email address, twice, for interested managers to send their résumés.

It’s not unusual for a company to let the world know they’re hiring, but that kind of open call is surprising given the mystique the Soros name has in the investing world. George Soros is known for bold moves such as his 1992 bet against the British pound, which earned him the moniker “the man who broke the Bank of England.” In its heyday, his hedge fund returned more than 30% a year.

But it’s a very different operation now. It has to be. Fitzpatrick started her job in 2017, the year Soros finished transferring about $18 billion of his wealth to the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest funder of groups promoting justice, democracy, and human rights. For the first time, most of the money at the firm belonged to the charity rather than to Soros and his family.

It’s been a wrenching shift. In the two and a half years since Fitzpatrick took the helm at the $25 billion firm, she’s been looking for more talent after replacing 13 portfolio managers she fired or who quit. She’s hired, 15 new managers. In the meantime, returns have failed to keep up with those of peers or with the foundation’s own long-term benchmark. In part that’s because Fitzpatrick reduced risk more than a year ago. She says returns were also muted by the performance of some private equity and hedge fund investments leftover from prior management.