GEORGE SOROS, the billionaire investor, yesterday failed in his appeal in Paris against an insider trading conviction that he fears will destroy his reputation.

The Paris Appeal Court upheld a €2.2 million fine for using privileged information during a botched corporate raid on the Société Générale bank in 1988. The fine is equivalent to the profits Mr Soros, 74, made from the transaction.

The Hungarian-born financier was not in court to hear the ruling, but Maître Jean-Michel Darois, his lawyer, said he would appeal to France’s highest tribunal, la Cour de Cassation. “After a bad inquiry that has taken such as long time, we could only expect a bad decision,” he said.

At the hearing last month, Mr Soros, who helped to break the pound with his speculative attacks on it in 1992, pleaded with the appeal court judges to quash his conviction. He said: “My reputation is at stake. I have many enemies all over the world, not only in America but in the former Soviet Union and in parts of Asia. The conviction by the lower court was a gift to my enemies and they have already used it.”

However, the court found him guilty of exploiting “precise, confidential information that was liable to affect the price” of Société Générale shares.

The court was told Mr Soros had been approached by an adviser to the French financier Georges Pebereau, who was planning to take over Société Générale in 1988.

Although Mr Soros declined to join in the raid, he had his Quantum Fund pay $50 million for shares in the bank and in three other newly privatised French companies, the court was told. Société Générale shares rose from Fr260 to Fr600, and the takeover failed. Mr Soros sold his shares at a profit.

The court said this constituted insider dealing. It dismissed Mr Soros’s claim that this information had been in the public domain and so was not privileged.