Famous family’s succession struggles
DOWn the centuries the Rothschild dynasty, with an assortment of loosely connected banking and financial enterprises across europe, has been wary of publicity.
The concern always has been of feeding the anti-Semitic narrative that Jews are the hidden controlling force in global finance.
Instead, the family has quietly developed a reputation for integrity.
The London branch of the empire was founded in the 18th century by Sir evelyn de Rothschild’s great, great grandfather.
nM Rothschild famously raised the loans which helped the Duke of Wellington secure his victory over napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
More recently, the fundamental question of the appropriate role of merchant banks such as nM Rothschild transfixed the Square Mile at the start of the Thatcher era in the 1980s.
But two Rothschild cousins, evelyn and Jacob, had different visions of how the bank should operate.
Jacob, heir to the 3rd Baron and later to become master of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, was the more adventuresome. he felt that the bank needed to prepare itself for a new era of growth in the City through a merger with SG Warburg, which had developed a prowess in mergers and acquisitions and shown a willingness to move beyond advice to trading.
This was seen as too challenging by the family’s old guard. It was the more conservative evelyn who marshalled the support of the dynasty and the City and saw Jacob off the field of battle.
With the assistance of veteran City trader Sir Michael Richardson, evelyn set about taking advantage of the Thatcherite reforms, including the Big Bang in 1986.
The duo founded broker Smith new Court, which took the latter part of its name from the historic Rothschild headquarters on St Swithin’s Lane in the heart of the City.
In 1996 potential successor Amschel Rothschild tragically hanged himself in a Paris hotel room. So evelyn set out to secure a succession at the London bank which didn’t involve his cousin Jacob, now Lord Rothschild. Instead, he reached across the Channel to Paris, and his French cousin Baron David de Rothschild.
The French Rothschild bank had suffered a huge setback when it was nationalised by president Francois Mitterrand’s government in 1984, forcing David to start out all over again. But the weight, fame and trust of the Rothschild name, combined with David’s skill and ambition, brought the French bank back from the embers of socialism.
evelyn saw a merger as providing a bridge into the eU as well as securing the succession. Baron David took over as executive chairman when evelyn retired in 2003 and set about bringing all the Rothschild banks under one umbrella, as Rothschild Continuation.
he even raised outside capital through a publicly quoted French vehicle.
The bank remains firmly under the control of the French arm with Baron David’s son Alexandre now at the helm.
Jacob Rothschild went on to create his own multi-billion business Rothschild Investment Trust as well as insurer St James’s, now independent financial adviser St James’s Place.