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Soros said to liquidate $6B
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May 16, 2000: 12:42 p.m. ET
Report: investment guru raises cash pile, expecting investor redemptions
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Legendary investor George Soros has liquidated some $6 billion in assets from his flagship Quantum fund, twice as much as expected, in anticipation of a wave of investor redemptions, according to a report published Tuesday.
The fund's managers have turned more than 80 percent of the fund's $7 billion in assets into cash, according to the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the fund.
Shawn Pattison, a spokesman for Soros, said the fund declined to comment on the report.
Soros previously indicated he would raise $3 billion as part of a reshuffle designed to give his funds a more conservative profile. The newspaper speculated that the larger redemption could be because Soros expects more redemptions than he originally planned.
Heavy losses in the technology sector hit the Soros funds hard earlier this year. The newspaper reported that Soros has effectively quit the large-scale hedge fund business.
Soros told investors his two main funds would re-align their investment criteria along less risky lines.
One industry observer said that move may not sit well with some investors, and in effect would create larger expected redemptions.
"(Soros) announced a ground-up restructuring in the way he runs his business, so it's possible that investors are not comfortable staying in for the transition," said Hunt Taylor, an independent hedge fund consultant.
The reported liquidations aren't a surprise given the major change in the style of the fund, said Meredith Jones, senior vice president at Van Hedge Fund Advisors in Nashville, Tenn.
"If you're doing a total paradigm shift and completely changing the investment mandate of the fund, then at least in theory, the positions are not going to make sense," Jones said.
An unidentified analyst told the FT that investors would not be happy at seeing several high-profile fund managers leave the Soros stable as a result of the changes in investment policy.
Soros has been a formidable investor for more than 30 years, most famously making £1 billion ($1.5 billion) in a single day in 1992 by successfully betting the British pound would drop out of Europe's fixed exchange rate system. Soros has spent an increasing amount of his time in recent years on philanthropic causes. 
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