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.