Soros has five children with two wives, of which Alex is the fourth. People close to the matter long anticipated Jonathan, Soross third child, to assume his role, including Jonathan himself. However, Jonathan and his father didnt get on on certain points, the elder Soros himself told the Wall Street Journal, without elaborating. Jonathan left the family investment empire in 2011 to start Athletes Unlimited, which operates womens athletic leagues.

Jonathans exit left the heirship open for Alex, who holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and has now fully pivoted from playboy to a progressive advocate to a bona fide hedge fund power player. Alex seemed an unlikely successor a decade ago, when he kept company with a rotating cast of celebrities and filled his social media feed with pictures of roaring parties, but he began associating with heads of state and advocacy leaders in the late Obama years and has now transitioned to helming his fathers $25 billion investing and philanthropy empire.

Its unclear why the three other Soros children, Robert, Andrea, and Gregory, were not in the succession running. Robert, the eldest, was reported by Page Six to be in a messy divorce around 2014 and worked at Soros Fund Management until 2017, when he left to form his own wealth management firm. Andrea, Soros only daughter, serves as a board member at Open Society Foundations. And Gregory, the youngest Soros, is a sculptor who prefers to keep a low profile. 

Heres a look back at how Alex Soros, once famous for hosting #CampSoros in the Hamptons, got the corner office.

I have the incentive of failing my own reputation

Chilling at dads house in Southampton, drinking 40s while cruising on the family boat, and making out with the babes. Thats how The New York Times depicted a 2008 blog post from the now-defunct gossip site Cityfile which had somehow gotten into Alex Soros Facebook page.

It was embarrassing for the entire family, Alex told the Times Styles section in 2012, not least because it was his first entry into public life: My mom was like, Welcome to being a Soros.

Nevertheless, he had been a big name on the New York party scene in the late 2000s, known for hosting lavish parties in the Hamptons with celebrity and model-studded invite lists. His events often populated the pages of Page Six through the mid-2010s, for instance see a 2016 report of him shuttling models to Villa Maria, the $72 million Hamptons mansion of late shoe designer Vince Camuto. Parties at the Villa included lobster bakes, games of drunken hide-and-seek, bottles of rosé. 

At the time, he was a silent presence at his fathers firm. Alex used to come to board meetings, but he hardly spoke, Aryeh Neier, Open Society Foundationss former president, told the Wall Street Journal.

Alex posted prolifically on Instagram, showing himself hanging out with the likes of music mogul Scooter Braun, basketball star Joakim Noah, and model Chanel Iman (his ex-girlfriend). Celebrities and socialites often posted from his Hamptons events with the caption #CampSoros. In 2016, Page Six reported that Alex enlisted promoter Adam Spoont to recruit ranks of models for his summer social calendar. At that same time, Alex was pursuing his PhD in history from UC Berkeley, enrolling in 2010 and graduating in 2018. 

But in 2012, as Alex told the Times, he started wanting to shed his scenester scion reputation. He said he was shocked at the nepo-playboy caricature that often ran in the press.

I have the incentive of failing my own reputation, he told the Times. If I dont succeed, then Im just another deadbeat lazy trust-fund kid.

While Alex still entertained prolifically and maintained his celebrity ties, in his 30s his Instagram became increasingly populated with world leaders and high-profile liberal politicians. In 2021, he posed at the Capitol Building with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who he referred to as his good friend in the caption. 

Alex also became more involved in the family empire in recent years, stepping in for the elder Soros on visits to the companys worldwide offices and serving as chairman of Open Society Foundations since December. With his new appointment, he will also direct Democracy PAC, the Soros super PAC.

Alex became more dedicated to philanthropic work, founding the Alexander Soros foundation for social justice grants in 2012. He often donates to voting rights and gender equity groups. To be sure, few people are as political as his father, whose huge donations to liberal causes have made him the target of numerous right-wing conspiracy theoriesand even terrifyingly resulted in a bomb being mailed to his house in Chappaqua in 2018. Still, Alex told the Journal this week that he was more political than his father, and intends to keep pumping money to the left as long as the other side is doing it.

Hes earned it, Soros said of his successor. 

Soros Fund Management did not respond to Fortunes request for comment.

Recent unruly behavior includes a man allegedly pinning an American Airlines Group Inc. flight attendant to the cockpit door after an argument about vegetarian meals; an Air India Ltd. passenger being restrained after trying to open the aircraft door and attacking crew; and Qantas Airways Ltd. and its low-cost carrier Jetstar temporarily banning four drunk men in Australia for allegedly verbally abusing customers and staff.

Globally, there was one disorderly incident reported for every 568 flights in 2022, up from one per 835 flights in 2021, the International Air Transport Association said in a statement this month, citing data collated from more than 20,000 reports submitted by around 40 airlines. Failure to comply with crew instructions such as using e-cigarettes and vapes and not fastening seatbelts increased by more than a third. 

Fraying passenger tempers can be put down to a few things. With lounge access easier than ever, more people are drinking alcohol before boarding. Theres also the general annoyance over high ticket prices and heightened anxiety in wake of Covid. Chaotic airports, lost luggage and flight cancellations as carriers struggle with a lack of planes and labor arent helping either.

Now the aviation industry is calling for action. IATA, which represents about 300 airlines accounting for 83% of the worlds air traffic, wants more nations to prosecute offending passengers. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents US cabin crews, says flight attendants should be given mandatory self-defense training and security beefed up at airport screening points, boarding gates and on planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration has started a campaign with social media memes and airport signs explaining what constitutes disruptive behavior and its potential consequences, said Tim Colehan, IATAs assistant director for external affairs. Other countries can look to the zero-tolerance approach in the US, which he said deters misbehavior by taking strong enforcement action.

Fear and booze

IndiGo Chief Executive Officer Pieter Elbers said since Covid restrictions were lifted theres been a change in the flying experience and some people are struggling to adjust. Planes were pretty empty and suddenly they were full again, and people lost a little bit of that feeling of being with so many people together, sparking some anxiety, he said.

Those fears are playing out in different ways. A man on an Asiana Airlines flight in South Korea late last month opened an exit door as the plane neared the airport in the city of Daegu in the southeast of the country. He later told police he did it because he felt suffocated and wanted to get off the aircraft.

Fliers have forgotten travel etiquette and theyre not as accustomed to being around strangers after spending long periods at home with limited socializing, said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. The mixed messages and abrupt policy changes around Covid have also agitated some people.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, alcohol abuse is a major contributor to air rage. During the pandemic, takeaway alcohol became common at airports and pushing consumption of booze for profit led to passengers drinking up to the boarding gate with no responsible oversight, Nelson said.

All of those issues certainly add to the recipe for violence, said Nelson. Its never acceptable.

IATA said while physical abuse incidents remain rare, there was an increase of 61% over 2021, occurring once every 17,200 flights.

Global problem

The US has seen 783 air rage incidents so far this year, 49% higher than pre-Covid levels, according to the FFA. In the UK, instances in 2022 nearly tripled from 2019 to 1,028, according to the television news channel Sky News.

In Australia, as travelers took to the air again last year, authorities noticed an emerging pattern of disruptive behavior. Australian Federal Police reported a series of what it called air-rage incidents at major airports stemming from missed flights, delays and problems with baggage. Violence also broke out outside terminals in disputes over taxis or ride-share vehicles.

The number of public disturbances, assaults or incidents of intoxication and offensive behavior at Sydney and Melbourne airports the countrys two primary aviation hubs soared to 463 between March and September last year from 279 in the same period a year earlier, according to the AFP.

And the problem is getting worse. According to exclusive AFP data, there were 401 similar incidents in Sydney and Melbourne airports this year through May 14. That dwarfs last years monthly rate.

Such episodes of bad behavior seem to be especially frequent in India, a nation of 1.4 billion people where flying is new to many. IndiGo, the countrys biggest airline, has trained crew to spot the varying levels of disruptive behavior and take action accordingly. 

CEO Elbers said there was one case of a cabin crew member being harassed by a passenger. So she replied, Im not your servant, and actually that went viral, he said. And she got a lot of support for that. And my reaction was please treat our staff the way you want to be treated.

The carrier only operates with female cabin crew and doesnt serve alcohol on domestic flights.

One incident gained particular notoriety last November when a man urinated on another passenger during an Air India flight from New York to New Delhi. 

In January, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said in a statement that the airline reviewed its policy around alcohol service on flights and started an education program to improve its crews handling of unruly passengers. The airline gave iPads to pilots and senior cabin crew so they can report incidents to the aviation regulator faster.

Nelson wants more people to talk about air rage. She also urged passengers to step up as helpers and be patient with crew and aviation workers on the ground. 

Our cabins are small microcosms of humanity, she said. Social and political issues always show up on planes. Its really just a handful of bad actors who need to be grounded and face consequences for their violent actions. 

While some on Wall Street question whether stocks can continue their run of form in the second half of the year, pointing to stretched valuations in the big tech names and A.I. plays that have led the rebound so far, Wedbushs top tech analyst Dan Ives argues its just the beginning of the A.I. gold rush.

Many of the tech skeptics will point to today as a 1999 moment ala on the verge of the Dot.com bubble/collapse given the significant move in tech valuations, we strongly disagree, the veteran analyst wrote in a Monday research note. While valuations in tech will be front and center, we continue to believe A.I. is driving the tech sector to a 1995 moment with a long runway of growth ahead that we have not seen since the 1990s.

The parallels between the dot-com era that began in 1995 and the A.I. revolution of 2023 are quite striking. Both then and now, experts argued that a new technology was on the verge of rewiring the global economy, stocks were coming off a down year, and economists and business leaders were worried about the future of the U.S. due to its rising national debt. Books like the January 1993 title, Bankruptcy 1995, became best-sellers in the early 90s, warning of a coming economic crash due to Americas deficit crisiswhich, of course, never came.

Despite the fears and pessimistic predictions, between 1995 and the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2001, the Nasdaq Composite rose over 800% as the economy remained stable and investors looked to profit from the rise of the internet. Over the following year and half, the index gave back nearly all of those gains when valuations came back to Earth, but 1995 was the start of the bubble, not the end.

Ives believes that we could be seeing a similar pattern now, arguing the development of A.I. represents something akin to the internet, calling it the 4th industrial revolution. He predicts the tech sector stocks will soar another 10% to 12% in the second half of the year alone as investors recognize that A.I. is an $800 billion opportunity for tech firms, and monetization has already begun. 

On top of that, he argued that inflation is rapidly cooling, which should enable the Federal Reserve to end its streak of aggressive interest rate hikes that have weighed on the economy. As measured by the consumer price index, year-over-year inflation dropped from its June 2022 four-decade high of 9.1% to just 4.9% in April, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency will release Mays data on Tuesday.

If inflation does continue to fall, it should lead investors back into riskier stocks that can benefit from a bull market, according to Ives. This speaks to a strong year for tech stocks in 2023, he wrote, arguing the risk-on trade will gain momentum as investors focus on the A.I.

Ives said that Microsoft and Nvidia remain the clear market leaders in A.I., but he also believes Google, Oracle, Amazon, Salesforce, Palantir, MongoDB, Apple, IBM, Meta, Snowflake, C3.ai, and other tech stalwarts, along with smaller players in the industry, will benefit as the technology advances.