THE PEOPLE SCHEMING TO KEEP BRITAIN IN THE EU
GEORGE SOROS
THE Hungarian-born American financier famously bet against sterling on Black Wednesday in 1992 – earning him one billion dollars and the nickname ‘the man who broke the Bank of England’.
After ploughing billions into causes including the legalisation of drugs, he has bankrolled Best for Britain with at least £800,000 in donations.
In February Mr Soros, 87, wrote: ‘I spent nine years in this country and became a confirmed Anglophile. Work took me to New York in 195 , but Britain remained close to my heart. I still have a house in London and spend part of each year there.’
He categorised Brexit as ‘loselose proposition both for Britain and for Europe’.
‘Prior to Brexit, Britain enjoyed the best of all possible worlds: it was a member of the European Union without adopting the euro,’ he wrote. ‘Europe will suffer from the absence of British pressure for the necessary institutional reforms.’
As a young man Mr Soros studied philosophy at the London School of Economics.
He went on to work in merchant banking and, later, hedge fund management. Between 1979 and
2011, Mr Soros donated more than £8billion to a wide range philanthropic causes.
Since then he has donated billions more through his international grant-awarding network, Open Society Foundations.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Mr Soros had moved £13.5billion of his fortune to the foundations.
It became the second largest US-based philanthropic organisations after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Soros Fund Management gave over £5million to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. It previously donated to Barack Obama.
LORD MALLOCH -BROWN
The former diplomat, who was a foreign office minister under Gordon Brown, is chairman of Best for Britain. He has been described as: ‘The very incarnation of what made people vote Leave in the first place.’ As a minister he provoked anger by spending £10,000 on refurbishing his grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty Arch.
PETER NORRIS
Sir Richard Branson’s right-hand man has been on the board of Best for Britain since it was started after the Brexit vote with money from the Virgin founder. A former investment banker, he was chief executive of Barings Bank when it collapsed in 1995. He became chairman of Virgin Group in 2009 when Sir Richard took a step back from day-to-day management.
ELOISE TODD
The Best for Britain chief executive resigned from her job in Brussels as global director of U2 singer Bono’s anti-poverty charity ONE following the Brexit vote. She returned to London to take up her role on the campaign. She had worked for Labour MEPs for seven years after studying at the College of Europe in Bruges.
STEPHEN PEEL
The Best for Britain board member and former Goldman Sachs banker represented the country in rowing at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. He says Britain’s Achilles’ heel is its small size and has warned Brexit will make us poorer. His Russian-born wife Yana runs the Serpentine Galleries in London’s Kensington Gardens, a one-time favourite haunt of Princess Diana.