Soros fined €2.2m for insider trading
Hungarian-born Soros had appealed a French court’s 2002 decision which found him guilty of using insider information regarding a failed 1988 corporate raid on bank Societe Generale to make $2 million on the company’s stock.
The financier turned philanthropist told the appeals court last month he did not believe he had done anything wrong.
His lawyers said they would appeal yesterday’s decision. Societe Generale was privatised in 1987 and its stock rose the following year during an unsuccessful takeover bid. Mr Soros was accused of having obtained insider information before the failed raid drove up the share price.
The financier has said the planned raid on Societe Generale was common knowledge in financial markets and he had not obtained any confidential information.
Lawyers for Soros had argued in 2002 the case was too old to judge. It took 14 years to come to trial because of delays in securing information from authorities in the Netherlands, Britain, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
Mr Soros, 74, is best known as The Man Who Broke the Pound for betting against sterling in 1992 until London pulled out of the European currency grid that preceded the euro single currency.
Mr Soros’s Quantum Fund made nearly $1 billion in 1992 by betting against sterling. But it was hammered by huge losses in April 2000 due to an ill-timed move into high-tech stocks.
Since then he has set about using his fortune and network of foundations to help tackle what he sees as the failures of a global financial market system which penalises poor states.
