George Soros is looking for a replacement.

Finding one will not be easy. Mr. Soros is one of the world's most storied investors and as replaceable as John F. Welch Jr., the chairman of General Electric, or basketball's Michael Jordan. Consider it the biggest talent search in the history of hedge funds, the exclusive private funds that cater to the rich and to private institutions like museums and college endowments.

Mr. Soros, 70, is one of the world's best-known hedge fund managers and philanthropists, though his reputation as an investor suffered last year when the market started to collapse in March. As a result, he scaled back the ambitions of his fund empire. Still, after the defection of most of his firm's outside investors, Soros Fund Management of New York has $11 billion in assets remaining -- down from a peak of $22 billion in 1998 -- and is one of the world's largest hedge fund groups.

Now, Mr. Soros wants to step aside from what remains of his fund empire and focus more on philanthropy. His son Robert, 38, serves as chief executive of Soros Fund Management, which has more than 200 employees. But the younger Soros does not oversee the money management aspect of the firm, the heart of the business. Since Mr. Soros's top lieutenant, Stanley Druckenmiller, left last year, Mr. Soros has taken a more active role and has not had a chief investment officer.

But yesterday, Mr. Soros said that he was looking for someone to ''take charge and replace me.''

''It's a chief investment officer in charge of the in-house portion of the equity portfolio, with a view that he could take control of the entire portfolio eventually,'' he added during a phone interview from Berlin, where he is promoting the German translation of his new book, ''Open Society.''