40% of the staff are laid off by the George Soros foundation
After the 92-year-old declared that he had given control of the multi-billion-dollar foundation to his son, Alexander, he also stated that his Open Society Foundations would be laying off at least 40% of its personnel every month.
According to CNN, Mark Malloch-Brown, the foundation’s president, and Alexander Soros announced the employment layoffs in a joint statement.
It said that “significant changes” will be made to the foundation’s operational structure.
The statement claimed that the Board “aims to transform operations across the global network through this new model, with the goal of generating a nimbler organisation better able to build on past successes and confront urgent and emerging challenges.”
According to a spokeswoman for the Open Society Foundations, the organisation had to make “difficult decisions” in order to achieve its new vision and that it intended to cut at least 40% of its staff internationally.
There are now 800 employees working for the Open Society Foundations worldwide.
The older Soros, a wealthy investor, philanthropist, and supporter of liberal causes who was born in Hungary, revealed in June that he had chosen his son, 37, to lead the group.
Alexander Soros said he and his father “think alike” but that he is more political than his father in an interview published in the Wall Street Journal to announce the decision.
In addition, Alexander Soros said that he intended to direct the foundation to concentrate more on US internal politics under his direction.
According to the Journal, he recently had meetings with members of the US government and liberal leaders from other nations, including as Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Canada’s Justin Trudeau.
According to Forbes, George Soros has a net worth of $6.7 billion, but according to CNN, he has given $32 billion more to his foundation since 1984.
According to the website for the Soros foundation, it is “the largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights” in the world.
