Business
Money Talks
By Jim Sutherland published Sep 1, 2007
In June, Frank Giustra, one-time wunderkind head of Yorkton Securities, founder of Lions Gate Entertainment and current operator of merchant bank Endeavour Financial, announced the donation of $100 million-and half of all his future earnings-to a foundation that would fight Third World poverty. Called the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, and primed with an additional $100 million from Mexico-based Carlos Slim Helú (who, according to Fortune, has surpassed Bill Gates as the world's richest man), the fund apparently grew from the vision of former U.S. president (and current Giustra pal) Bill Clinton, the more immediate influence of Giustra's wife, filmmaker and "venture philanthropist" Alison Lawton, and a mysterious epiphany in a Yaletown restaurant. Giustra challenged the entire mining industry to step up and, sure enough, within days the Vancouver-based Lundin Group climbed aboard with another $100 million.
If $100 million were being given away 10 years ago, people in the mining industry would more likely have been the recipients. In 2007, however, the story is about more than good times in the commodity and metals markets and the miracle revival of a moribund business. It's about "giving back," which-more than hedge funds, more than private equity, certainly more than dreary real estate-is the topic du jour among the superrich of North America.
The $30 billion or so pledged in recent years by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation no doubt has something to do with this philanthropic fervour, but the real trailblazer was George Soros, the legendary currency speculator and hedge fund investor who "broke the Bank of England" and pocketed a billion dollars back in 1992. Not long afterwards, Soros backed away from fund management to write books and run his Open Society Institute. A liberal in both the Adam Smith and contemporary anti-conservative sense, the Hungarian-born Soros had previously helped to fund movements that brought an end to communism in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and more recently played a role in Ukraine's Orange Revolution. An equal opportunity geopolitical meddler, Soros contributed millions to the Democrats in 2004 and said he would have given away his entire fortune had there been a guarantee that George W. Bush would be defeated.
