Titan of finance, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild dies aged 91

When I met Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, then 86, at his short-lived gourmet chocolate shop in Belgravia, he regaled me with his last big idea: no tax for over-90s.

‘When you reach the age of 70, the tax rate should be reduced every five years. Then you don’t have to pay any tax at all on your 90th birthday.

They need to lower taxes on old people so they can be self-sufficient and live in their own homes.”

Maybe it was ironic, maybe not.

Sir Evelyn, who passed away peacefully at home at the age of 91, would have been eligible for the tax break herself, in the unlikely event that it had made it to a Chancellor’s budget speech.

He didn’t need the money, of course: a behemoth of a financier, he was a multi-billionaire.

He was also a chocoholic and confided to him that he set up his exquisite and expensive confectionery shop to compensate for the fact that he ran out of sweets during the war.

The store closed during the pandemic, but it was little more than a trifle in a legendary financial empire.

Sir Evelyn, born in London in 1931, the only son of Anthony de Rothschild and Yvonne Cahen d’Anvers, was destined for the family bank from birth.

After Harrow and an economics degree at Trinity College Cambridge, he joined the bank in 1957. His career there spanned more than four decades.

Under his leadership, the bank’s total assets grew from £40 million to £4.6 billion.

Sir Evelyn was close to top politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, including Margaret Thatcher.

In 1986 the then Conservative government turned to NM Rothschild for help with one of its flagship policies – and one that would revolutionize the city – the privatization of British Gas.

According to Rothschild lore, the ‘Tell Sid’ campaign to sell stock to the public is named after one of the mailroom clerks.

The real Sid worked at the bank’s headquarters in New Court in the City. The British Gas sale positioned NM Rothschild to monetize a lucrative wave of privatizations that kicked off around the world.

In the United Kingdom it was involved in the sale of British Steel, the electricity and water companies, British Coal and BT.

Political connections played a role in his third marriage, to British-American Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

The couple were introduced by Henry Kissinger and spent a night of their honeymoon at the Clinton White House in 2000.

Forester de Rothschild, who survives him, is a successful businesswoman herself.

Sir Evelyn’s first marriage, to Jeannette Bishop, ended in divorce. He had three children with his second wife, Victoria Lou Schott: Jessica, Anthony and David. That marriage also ended in divorce. He had two stepsons with Forester de Rothschild.

In addition to his role in the family business, Sir Evelyn was president of The Economist magazine from 1972 to 1989.

He was knighted in 1989 and for many years was a trusted financial adviser to the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Her Majesty, he told me, was quite frugal because ‘she was brought up during the war with very careful ideas. If you had rationing, it had a big effect on your life, didn’t it? Your whole life.’

He was a messenger at the coronation, where he showed up in the wrong uniform. “I went to Moss Bros because I didn’t have a uniform and they accidentally made me a Commodore overnight.”

No one noticed his faux pas because, he said, “They were all drunk anyway. You had to get up at five in the morning to be in the parade at Westminster Abbey by seven or so and they were all drunk.”

In later life he focused on his family investment company EL Rothschild and on philanthropy, stating, “I don’t think banking is as much fun as it used to be.”

One of his favorite causes was Elephant Family, a conservation charity he founded in 2002 with the Rajmata of Jaipur and Mark Shand, the late brother of the Queen Consort. Elephants, he thought, “are probably more intelligent than us.”

The Succession Struggle of the Famous Family

Through ALEX BRUMMER city ​​editor

Over the centuries, the Rothschild dynasty, with an assortment of loosely linked banking and financial firms across Europe, has been wary of publicity.

The concern has always been to feed the anti-Semitic narrative that Jews are the hidden controlling force in global finances.

Instead, the family has quietly built 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 was famous for the loans that helped the Duke of Wellington secure his victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

More recently, the fundamental question of the proper role of commercial banks such as NM Rothschild loomed on the Square Mile at the dawn of the Thatcher era in the 1980s.

But two Rothschild cousins, Evelyn and Jacob, had different views on how the bank should work.

Jacob, heir to the 3rd Baron and later master of Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, was all the more adventurous.

He felt the bank needed to prepare for a new era of growth in the city by merging with SG Warburg, who had developed a capability in mergers and acquisitions and demonstrated a willingness to go beyond consulting and trading.

This was seen as too challenging by the old guard of the family. It was the more conservative Evelyn who gathered the support of the Dynasty and the City and saw Jacob off the battlefield.

With the help of veteran City trader Sir Michael Richardson, Evelyn began taking advantage of Thatcherite reforms, including the Big Bang in 1986.

The duo founded estate agent Smith New Court, who 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 hotel room in Paris. So Evelyn started looking for a succession at the London bank that didn’t involve his cousin Jacob, now Lord Rothschild. Instead, he crossed the Channel to Paris, and his French cousin Baron David de Rothschild.

The French Rothschild bank had suffered a huge setback when it was nationalized in 1984 by the government of President Francois Mitterrand, forcing David to start from scratch.

But the weight, fame and confidence 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 a bridge to the EU and a secure succession.

Baron David took over as executive chairman when Evelyn retired in 2003 and began bringing all Rothschild banks under one umbrella, as a Rothschild continuation.

He even raised outside capital through a publicly listed French vehicle.

The bank remains firmly under the control of the French branch with Baron David’s son Alexandre now at the helm.

Jacob Rothschild founded his own multi-billion dollar company Rothschild Investment Trust, as well as insurer St James’s, now independent financial advisor St James’s Place.