According to Forbes, investors should refrain from investing into Russia’s economy. “It is a sinking economy and is being taken in the wrong direction by Putin,” said multimillionaire George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He did not mention the reason why he had made such a conclusion.
George Soros has criticized Russian authorities earlier. In his last interview with the Rector at the New Economic School Sergei Guriev in November 2012, multimillionaire pointed out that repressions against civil society had strengthened in the Russian Federation.
Meanwhile, billionaire investor said he was not going to stop raise funds for charity in Russia. He did not specify his investment plans in Russia. According to mass media, connected with Mr Soros structures took part in the process of privatization of Russia’s Sberbank at the end of September 2012.
At the beginning of the 2000s Soros criticized Russia’s authorities for the fact that Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested and held in custody. In 2005 in the interview with Die Presse, the billionaire investor said that Russia should had left The Group of Eight (G8), as there was no more democracy there.
Earlier analytics from Goldman Sachs advise not to invest in the Russia’s economy. At the beginning of December 2012 the bank had removed the shares of the Russian stock market from top-list of GEM (Global Emerging Markets). Financial institution could not recommend Russian shares as attractive for investments due to uncertainties in development of some areas, said the chief economist at Goldman Sachs in Russia and CIS Clemens Graf. Development of Russia’s economy became one of the key topics discussed in Davos. January 25, economists presented three negative scenarios for Russia’s development; after that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev tried to convince investors that Russia had favourable conditions for economic growth.
George Soros is a financier and philanthropist. He is the founder of Open Society Institute, OSI. Billionaire investor is known as “The Man Who Broke the bank of England” after he made a reported £ 1.1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises. He had correctly speculated that the UK government would have to devalue the national currency.