Billionaire loses insider trading appeal

Billionaire investor George Soros failed to erase the only legal blemish on a long financial career today, when a Paris appeals court upheld his conviction for insider trading.

Rejecting Soros’ bid to clear his name, the Court of Appeal maintained the guilty verdict and €2.2m fine handed down by a lower court – the same amount that Soros made buying and selling Societe Generale shares in 1988 after receiving information about a planned corporate raid on the bank.

Soros’s lawyers immediately announced that the Hungarian-born businessman planned to appeal to the supreme court.

His spokesman in New York, Michael Vachon, said Soros remained “confident that ultimately he’ll be vindicated.”

Soros, 74, has often drawn criticism for speculating heavily on the collapse of fragile currencies. Last year he also angered many on the American right by pumping £13 million into anti-Bush election campaigns.

He now heads a philanthropic network that has funnelled massive sums into education, public health, science and non-governmental groups, mostly in the former communist bloc.