The New York-based fund manager, which is now a single family office, did not wish to comment whether the story was true or false: “At any firm of our size, hiring and firing is part of the normal course of business,” a spokesperson for the company said.

Reuters reported that since the firm named Scott Bessent as chief investment officer in September, a handful portfolio managers and analysts have left the company.

The firm decided to convert into a family office in July and in connection to that development, the firm’s CIO, Keith Anderson, left the firm to seek other opportunities. Anderson joined in 2008 after 20 years at BlackRock, which he co-founded in 1988.

When Bessent was appointed, it was also announced that Jonathan Soros, son of George, was to step down from day-to-day management at the firm.

Although Soros has exited the industry when converting into a family office in July, hedge funds have largely had a rough ride of late.

In November, most hedge funds lost ground for the fifth time in the last seven months in what has been a torrid time for the $2 trillion-plus sector, as funds struggled to decide strategy with uncertainties engulfing the eurozone. Data also showed new fund launches declined in the third quarter of 2011.

Data from Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research showed that its HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index declined by -0.92 per cent, with weakness across all sub-strategies more concentrated in equity and credit-sensitive strategies.

" The man who blew up the bank of England"

A letter to shareholders at the end of July revealed that the company will stop managing funds for outside investors and become a family office.

That meant that Soros, who made a name for himself in the UK in 1992 when he made a profit of £1 billion when the Bank of England was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism and devalued the pound, in effect ended his four-decade-long career as a hedge fund manager.

The letter said the reason behind the move is new regulations that require private investment advisors to register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission by March 2012. It also underlined that the company has effectively operated as a family office since 2000, when it held outside money amounting to $4 billion. The firm will now return less than $1 billion to investors before the SEC deadline at latest.  

The company said that 80-year-old George Soros, who controls about $24.5 billion for himself, his family and his foundations, will stay on as chairman.

Soros became a trader on Wall Street in the 1950s. He set up the predecessor to the Quantum fund in 1969 and started his own firm in 1973. Besides his contribution to finance, he drives a philanthropic foundation since 1979, the Open Society Fund, which promotes democracy and market economy across the globe.