Can Rothschild reinvent itself?t
Towards professional excellence
For the French Rothschilds, 1981 proved a critical year. It was when the new socialist government of François Mitterrand nationalized most French banks, including the 165-year old Banque Rothschild.
Distraught at what had happened, Guy de Rothschild, who together with his son Baron David had run the bank in the post-war years, left the next year for the US. In a bitter adieu in French daily newspaper Le Monde, Guy said he was leaving his homeland after being “a Jew under Pétain [leader of the World War II collaborationist Vichy regime], a pariah under Mitterrand”.
But Baron David, who was then 38, thought it was too early to go into retirement. He set up a new firm called Paris Orléans Gestion because the Rothschilds were not allowed to use their own name. In 1984 the firm gained a banking licence and in 1986 the right to use the Rothschild name. Today, Rothschild & Cie Banque (RCB) is a significant player in French corporate finance.
For many years RCB and London-based NM Rothschild & Sons (NMR) worked completely independently, but gradually bridges have been built between the English and French Rothschilds and in 1992 Baron David became deputy chairman of NMR. With the growth in cross-border activities and the influence of the European Union, there is clearly scope for them to work even more closely. One proposal is to do this through Rothschild Europe, the holding company for operations in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany, of which Baron David is chairman.
