Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

While many today are familiar with his sometimes controversial political endeavors,

George Soros first became known to the public in the early 1990s as the man who broke the Bank

of England. Like much popular lore about Soros, this description is at best a half-truth, as one

of his portfolio manager, Stanley Druckenmiller, did most of the research that led to the

one-day billion-dollar gain on Black Wednesday, 1992.

Drucken Miller didn't fit the mould of a typical investment banker at all. He had dropped

out of graduate school at the University of Michigan without a degree and began his career

in finance by first failing the training program for loan officers at

Pittsburgh National Bank. A senior analyst within the firm took a liking to him anyhow and

offered him a role as a stock analyst on his team. Druck and Miller began working for George

Soros in 1988 and he describes how he was laughed at by Soros'

son the first time they met, as George had introduced him as his future successor.

Soros' son told Drucken Miller that ten people had already been introduced similarly in the past,

and none were still around. To be called the successor

was to be marked as a man with no future at the firm. By the time Drunken Miller arrived,

Soros had structured his firm with a number of sub-managers. Each manager would run what Soros

called a mini-account independently, and then Soros

would step up the size on any trade he found particularly attractive.

The two men didn't always see eye to eye.

In 1989 after a year at the firm, Drucken Miller took a position in bonds, and when he arrived into work the next

day, he saw that Soros had sold the position without consulting him.

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