Cuando incumpla con las determinaciones derivadas de las acciones de vigilancia del Instituto

Marquez reported for work on January 1, 1983. Soros turned over half of the fund’s pool money to him; the other half was given over to 10 outside managers. Apart from handling all of the domestic trading, Marquez backed Soros in international investing. And so it was Soros on a back burner, Marquez at full ame, and three others who kept the heat up in the trading room.

Though Soros adopted a lower prole, he managed to come into the ofce a great deal. Still, he spent long periods abroad-six weeks in the late spring in London, a month in the Far East or Europe in the fall.

Summers were reserved for Southampton, Long Island.

Soros and Marquez seemed well attuned to one another. Soros engaged in macro analysis, scanning the big picture: international pol-itics, monetary policies around the globe, changes in ination, inter-est rates, and currencies; Marquez, for his part, sought out industries and rms that would best take advantage of these expected new align-ments.

If the expectation was that interest rates would rise, for example, Soros had Marquez scout out industries that would be hurt in order to short stocks in those industries.

Soros employed the technique of selecting two companies in an industry for investment. But not just any two.

One had to be the best com-pany in the industry. As the preeminent player, this rm’s

stock would be purchased rst and most frequently, pushing the price up. The other had to be the worst company in the industry, the most highly leveraged, the one with the worst balance sheet. Investing in this company afforded the best chance to make large prots once the stock nally caught on with investors.

The rst four months of 1983 were “sort of a culture shock” to Mar-quez, a time when the new man came to realize that “this august fellow had really given me all the autonomy and authority-and money-and

“When choosing stocks in an industry, pick two,

but not just any two.

Pick the best and the worst.”

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the rope to hang myself.”

To prepare for work each morning, Marquez went through a rit-ual, sometimes in the shower, sometimes riding to work: He mapped out scenarios of what might happen that day in the nancial markets.

He called these his “framework of expectations,” and from that frame-work he drew conclusions on what to buy.

Once the trading day was over in New York, Soros and Marquez engaged in rigorous review sessions, often lasting well into the eve-ning. “It was exhilarating,” observed Marquez, “but very straieve-ning.

The one thing George Soros is very good at is that he can look at you when you’re explaining something and he can tell when you’re ratio-nalizing.”

Soros never let up, grilling his right-hand man as if he were giving an oral exam to a doctoral student. “Do you have any different thoughts than you did this morning?” he often began, and then rat-tled off an endless stream of questions-probing, searching for reasons why Marquez might have guessed wrong. Marquez remembered the review sessions as harrowing experiences: “Because he was constantly looking for the soft underbelly, he was constantly trying to nd out what was wrong with your story.

“George would try to nd out if the market was acting differently from what you expected. Let’s say I expected bank stocks to go up and if bank stocks were sideways to down for any amount of time, he would say: `Let’s go over our assumptions. Let’s go over the reasons why you’re doing this, why the perceptions are that this should hap-pen, and then try to reconcile [that] with what the market is saying.’”

If at rst Soros appeared to be playing the gray eminence around the ofce, he gradually got on Marquez’ nerves “because you felt like you were constantly being second-guessed. You constantly had to stand up to a level of intellectual nitpicking. I shouldn’t say nitpicking, just a picking away, constantly probing, and after a while, it’s very wearying. Very wearying.

“A lot of times you would do things exactly as you thought he wanted them done, and he would come back to you like a teacher talk-ing to a pupil, and say, `You didn’t understand that. That’s not what I meant.’ Then you’d be totally discombobulated because you thought you had a perfect understanding.

“It was very easy for him to lose his temper. He had a way of look-ing at you with such penetratlook-ing eyes that you felt you were under a

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laser gun. He could see straight through you. He always felt he wanted you around, but he never thought you were going to get it right, he would just tolerate you. Almost like you were a lesser being.

“All he asked of you is that you believe what you’re telling him, that you constantly examine and cross-examine. He would try to go to the jugular, and say, `Do you still believe what you told me yester-day?”’ Soros was not quick to lavish praise on others, or share credit when investments paid off.

“Sharing [credit] with him is a constant ght,” asserted Marquez.

“He gures this is the major leagues, and this is after all an economic, not an academic exercise. Your success is being determined in dollar and cents, and you’re being paid to win.”

Working with Soros could be intoxicating as well.

For a thirty-something like Jim Marquez, the life that George Soros led was ... well, different from his own.

He remembered with great fondness the time that Soros asked him to come along to a board meeting of the Soros Fund in Ireland. The site was a castle, the same one Ronald Reagan later visited as president. “It was a very raried atmosphere.” Over dinner with the directors, Mar-quez listened, enthralled as Soros moved easily from one language to another, English to French to German, depending upon what lan-guage a certain director spoke.

But the danger existed that one could be mesmerized by working with such a genius. “He could be so intellectually dominating that if you became intimidated, if you became a yes-man, clearly you were not doing him any good, and you were not doing yourself any good,”

observed Marquez.

“If you said, I want to be a little Soros, I want to be a world thinker, to think great thoughts, to be a great portfolio manager, and I’m going to do and act the way he does, it was clear that he didn’t need that in the ofce. He may need it now [1994] but he didn’t need it then. That’s a real siren call, to want to be like this fellow, because if you really think he’s a paradigm in the business, you quickly realize you’re not equipped, you’re just not equipped.”

Soros and Marquez enjoyed a good year in 1983. The fund now stood at $385,532,688, a net increase of $75,410,714 million, or 24.9 per-cent over 1982.

—–

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That same year George Soros married for the second time. His bride was 28-year-old Susan Weber. According to newspaper reports, Soros showed up late for the wedding because he had been playing tennis.

Other articles in the media reported an embarrassing moment at the wedding ceremony-one that Soros might have avoided had he taken the time to rehearse the ceremony. According to these articles, when the minister asked Soros if he was willing to give all his worldly goods to his new wife, Soros turned white. One of Soros’s sons pre-tended to cut his throat, apparently trying to suggest to his father, perhaps half jokingly, “There goes the fortune.” Soros quickly looked behind him at his personal attorney William Zabel, as if to say: “If I repeat the traditional vow `For better or worse, I do endow thee with all my worldly goods’ would I really be bound to give everything to Susan?” Zabel saved the day by indicating to Soros that no harm would be done by his answering. Just to be on the safe side, Soros mumbled in Hungarian, “Subject to my prior agreements with my heirs.” With that, the ceremony carried on.

—–

While 1983 had been a good year, 1984 was not. The fund was up, but only 9.4 percent, to $448,998,187.

The lower prot put Soros under pressure from board directors at Quantum to return full-time to investing. He agreed. Late in the summer of 1984, Soros broke the news to Marquez.

“Like it or not, I’m the captain of this ship, and I see a hundred-year storm coming. In a hundred-hundred-year storm, you want the ablest, best, most experienced hand at the helm. And let’s face it, between the two of us, that’s me.”

What exactly was the hundred-year storm?

Essentially, it was the collapse of the American economy in the wake of Reagan’s high-spending, no-taxing policies from the early 1980s. The United States, Soros believed, was heading for a depres-sion.

Marquez recalled: “All this pressure was building in the world system at that point. The dollar was getting stronger and stronger.

Reagan kept saying: `This is ne. The sign of a country’s true strength is the strength of its currency.’ And George Soros thought this would

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just blow the lid off at some point.”

Soros announced his plan to hire two other people. To Soros, the ideal organization had four or ve professionals, providing a depth and discipline that could not exist in a one- or two-person shop. Mar-quez could, if he wished, stay on in a lesser position and run a sub-group. Marquez decided to leave, believing that he was being shunted aside and would have less authority. He acknowledged, though, that

“the truth of the matter is that George wasn’t wrong. There were times at night I’d get these thromboses of the head where I couldn’t deal with it all. There was so much going on-and pressure.”

—–

Meanwhile, Soros had canvased his 10 outside fund managers for fresh blood. The name Allan Raphael came up.

“I was his rst draft choice,” said Raphael.

From 1980 to 1984, Raphael had been codirector of research at Arn-hold & S. Bleichroeder, the rm that had employed Soros in the 1960s and early 1970s. Raphael returned to Bleichroeder in December 1992 as senior vice president, director of global strategy, and senior portfolio manager.

In early August 1984, Soros decided to seek out Raphael. The two men had never met, though Raphael knew Soros by reputation.

Several of Soros’s outside managers had phoned Raphael to inform him that they had recommended him to Soros as a candidate for the number two job. His background in global economic research made him a natural.

“Would you be interested in talking with George?” one manager asked Raphael.

It took Raphael only “a nanosecond,” as he recalled. “Of course,”

he replied to the manager.

Raphael believed Soros to be the best investor on Wall Street. “His triumphs were just phenomenal.” The possible job offer seemed to Raphael too good to be true.

Then came the phone call from Soros himself. Could Raphael come over for breakfast to his Central Park West apartment the following Thursday?

Another nanosecond ashed by, and Raphael said yes.

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Raphael arrived at the breakfast convinced that his chances of get-ting a job offer were one in a million. He assumed that another 75 can-didates were in line, that the job selection process would take another year-at which time he would be passed over.

Ninety minutes passed, but Raphael attributed little signicance to the length of the breakfast. Then the two men rose from the table.

Raphael thought it a good time to sum himself up for Soros.

“It’s very important for you to know what I do and what I don’t do,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound too aggressive, too forward. He was not sure Soros had absorbed his words.

“Perfect,” came the response to the summary. “I do all the other things. We would be a good team.”

Raphael was taken aback. “I guess so” was all he could say in a small, faint voice.

Soros ashed his big smile and said with a degree of nality: “You think it over the weekend. We’ll meet on Monday or Tuesday. Call me up. You’ll come over again for breakfast.”

Walking out the apartment door and on to the street, Raphael began mulling over the last few minutes of the breakfast. He hailed a cab and sat down inside it, a big grin on his face. Perhaps he was dreaming. Making sure the cabdriver wasn’t looking, Raphael pinched himself. He decided he had not been dreaming. He just might be going to work for George Soros as his number two.

The following Tuesday found Raphael once again eating breakfast with George Soros. A formal job offer was actually made.

It was, as Raphael recalled, “basically, `Let’s get engaged before we get married. I’ll keep you for the rest of the year. Let’s see how it works out.”’

Again, a nanosecond passed. But for some reason that, years later, Raphael found hard to comprehend, he did not accept right there on the spot.

“Let me think about it,” he answered. Reliving that meeting in the spring of 1994, Raphael could only say: “It seemed the right thing to say.”

Recalling the warnings from others (“This guy is tough,” “He res people”), Raphael decided to overlook them: “Who cared? This was my chance. So I’d get knocked around a bit; it was just an extra-ordinary opportunity.” Raphael went for the phone and accepted the offer. In early September 1984, Raphael signed on with Soros.

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G

eorge Soros stepped up his role in the fund during late 1984. As much as he might have wanted to pass the baton on to others at the Quantum Fund, he was not yet ready to step down entirely.

He still believed a storm threatened the world’s economies. He could not guess its nature or when it would begin. But he wanted to be there when it happened, to ride its rough waves, to exploit it, perhaps.

Meanwhile, he paid careful attention to the fund, spending more time in the ofce, trying to make sure that 1984 and 1985 would be good years.

In December 1984, he had his eye on Great Britain, which was just launching a major privatization drive. Three of the companies in ques-tion were British Telecom, British Gas, and Jaguar. Soros understood that the British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, wanted each Brit-ish citizen to own shares in BritBrit-ish stocks. The way to accomplBrit-ish that?

Underprice the securities.

Soros asked Allan Raphael to look at Jaguar and British Telecom.

Raphael’s studies of Jaguar convinced him that its chairman, Sir John Egan, was doing a brilliant job, turning the Jaguar into the hot new import car in the United States. With the stock at 160 pence, Quantum took a position that represented 5 percent of its nearly $449 million portfolio, around $20 million. That would be a big position for other people, but not for George Soros.

Raphael met with Soros.

“I’ve done the research on Jaguar.” “What do you think?”

“I really like the way the company is performing. We’ll be OK, I think, in the position we’ve taken.”

To Raphael’s shock, Soros picked up the telephone and ordered his traders: “Buy another quarter of a million shares of Jaguar.”

Twelve

In document ANEXO ÚNICO LINEAMIENTOS PARA LA ACREDITACIÓN DE PERITOS EN MATERIA DE TELECOMUNICACIONES Y RADIODIFUSIÓN (página 28-34)