Reuters 'kills off' Soros in obit goof-up

News agency Reuters was left red-faced on Thursday after it published a 1,152-word obituary of billionaire financier George Soros, headlined "George Soros, enigmatic financier, liberal philanthropist dies at XX". Soros is still alive.

"George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of free-wheeling capitalism that made him billions," the article says. The net worth of Soros, according to the 2013 Forbes billionaires' list published in March, is $19.3 billion.

The piece then goes on to call him the man who broke the Bank of England "for selling short the British pound in 1992 and helping force the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism". Reuters detected the error soon and removed the post. But by then the article had gone viral. The news agency published a correction:

"Reuters erroneously published an advance obituary of financier and philanthropist George Soros. A spokesman for Soros said that the New York-based financier is alive and well. Reuters regrets the error."