Masterclass Case Study: George Soros and the Breaking of the Bank of England

A masterclass case study for senior macro investors, global fund managers and top-down strategists on the most famous currency trade in history. You start with the machinery: the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, Britain's October 1990 entry at 2.95 Deutsche Marks, and the collision between German reunification and a British recession that left the Bundesbank and the Bank of England needing opposite interest rates. You then sit beside George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller at the Quantum Fund as they build the thesis, apply reflexivity, read the pressure points from the Danish Maastricht vote to the lira crisis, and size an asymmetric short of roughly 10 billion dollars. Black Wednesday, 16 September 1992, is reconstructed hour by hour, from intervention and two emergency rate hikes to the evening exit, alongside the defender's arithmetic that explains why the Bank of England lost. The case closes with the payoff on both sides, the inflation targeting regime that followed, the same playbook in Thailand in 1997, India's own currency defences in 1991 and 2013, and a peg-breaking checklist and conviction framework you can apply to any managed exchange rate, including the rupee.