Sunday Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 86

30 CITY BUSINESS THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 23 JANUARY 1994 CITY BUSINESS Inside the Rothschild outsider In many ways Jacob is the quintessential Rothschild of his generation He inherited his eye for art and his first-class mind But for all his achievements wealth and fame the rift that him saw cast out of the family bank has left him feeling he is the Rothschild in exile Jacob Rothschild leads a double life His old friend Sir James Goldsmith puts it like this: depends which day it is On one Jacob is an excellent banker the next he is absorbed by art and heritage He has been torn between the two strands all his It is all in the genes His father Victor was the third Baron Rothschild a brilliant scientist academic industrialist and wartime spy His mother Barbara was an English aristocrat blue-stocking and artist It was a formidable cocktail He inherited his flawless eye for art and his first-class academic mind Some would say he also has his talent for intrigue Few have been as blessed as Rothschild He has enjoyed high achievements influence wealth and fame In Britain he chairs investment group St James Place Capital (formerly RIT) is outgoing chairman of the National Gallery and incoming chairman of National Heritage Memorial Fund He is involved with countless companies and organisations He sits on the advisory board of Hollinger the parent company When his father dftd in 1990 he became the fourth Baron Rothschild and about the same time inherited £93 million from his cousin Dorothy de Rothschild Such largesse from Fortune you might think would straighten out the most mangled psyche You would be wrong His tall frame is wracked with insecurity making him nervous and mercurial is a bear of enormous brain huge talent and great personal says Tate Gallery chairman Dennis Stevenson it worries me sometimes that he cannot relax and enjoy it Our interview is par for the course I arrive at Spencer House London home of the Princess of family transformed by him into a smart venue for corporate entertaining to find a compliance officer hovering alon-side a nervous publicist Rothschild materialises wearing one of those green quilted jackets that go with the green wellies so favoured by country folk He asks if the compliance officer can sit in Everyone at St James Place Capital is frightened of ily bank father sided with Eveylyn and out he went with Rothschild Investment Trust as a leaving present providing it changed its name to RIT Through RIT and his private company Five Arrows named after Mayer five sons Rothschild became involved in most of the big deals of the 1980s on both sides of the Atlantic He was a keen supporter of Guinness in its Distillers bid and stands by his position think it was an error of judgement The success of the merger has shown we were right We have made a very successful investment by hanging on to our His last big takeover foray was the £13 billion bid for BAT with Goldsmith Kerry Packer and chums Yet he bristles when I bring up the deal making dislike the kind of maverick deal making label very he says hope it went away a long time ago I much prefer builders to dealers" Since 1985 when he took on the National Gallery and particularly after BAT he has cleaved more to his artistic side Along with the £93 million he also inherited the running of the Rothschild charities in Israel They have built the Knesset and more recently the Supreme Court as well as funding a host of lower profile projects mainly in education realised that if I wanted to lead that kind of life I could only help others in building companies or doing he says I set out to attract talent to St James Place and reward people by making a virtue of not seeking control providing the capital and the Rothschild Gilbert de Botton and Nils Taube have proved the policy works But Rothschild and Weinberg seem of have struck pure gold with Rothschild Assurance am very says Rothschild may be true that the company is better off now I am spending so much time on other He sees little change in the future am entirely happy with the balance of my he says But it is hard to believe that as the economy recovers momentum the man so many see as the true descendent of Nathaniel Mayer will stay remote from the financial world There is after all a vacancy approaching at the top of the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild is now 62 and corporate finance arm is losing ground I can only speculate at what might happen if they called for the Rothschild in exile I guess it would depend on what day it was Rothschild since 1980 when he was cast out Jacob Rothschild was born on April 29 1936 in Merton Hall Cambridge where his father was an academic He is grateful for both influence recognise both sides in me and they are happily resolved by the life I he says But it was not an easy childhood He had a famously difficult relationship with his father and his parents split up when he was seven then did the usual thing of spending half the holidays with one parent half with the What effect did that have? would say terrible wounds terrible he says jokingly then changes tack like to think it had a great impact It has had a happy At Eton he was an all rounder was reasonably good he says His true colours showed later He was good at games and surprisingly for one so sensitive he became captain of games for his house But he did not become involved in Pop the Eton mafia only started joining the right clubs when I was he jokes He did not enjoy school much was an awkward difficult he says there were some penalties for being that Oxford proved a happier experience enjoyed myself I read books and met He has made firm and loyal friends throughout his life He read history at Christ Church because it was his best subject at Eton worked hard and was rewarded with a Did he want to prove himself to his father? my father and to an extent my mother came from intellectual backgrounds Therefore academic success was something they hoped for And I lived with clever people so I suppose that rubbed off on After Oxford he spent two years in the Life Guards was an uneasy soldier I am sure I learned hardship and He flirted with academia but decided to join family thought the bank was an interesting prospect I would advance quickly as a member of the family so why But to warm up he spent a year at Cooper Brothers a few months at Morgan Stanley and a year at Barro Equities under Hermann Robinow a former colleague of Siegmund Warburg was a brilliant man Most of what I learned came from says Rothschild His first triumph at Rothschild was to win the financing of the Trans-Alpine pipeline from under the nose of Morgan Stanley which had traditionally done that kind of business simply believe that we had won he says now with obvious pleasure That led to him working closely with Warburg who became such a good friend he left Rothschild a 19th century Bill in his will He swiftly became the driving force at the bank and by the early 1970s he was wheeling and dealing with the best of them Goldsmith Jim Slater and Saul Steinberg all became friends They were racy times and he developed a reputation for being able to outhink anyone has one of the finest corporate brains in says one old friend But he always pursued his artistic passions at one stage owning the Bond Street gallery Colnaghi where he reputedly drove a succession of young managers mad by knowing more than they did RIT also owned 20 per cent of for a time His knowledge of paintings architecture and furniture is highly regarded has a natural eye for says Chelsfield chairman Elliott Bernerd a former partner in the Stockley property group In the 1980 rift at the fam- what he might say he tells me in his plummy far-away voice It is not that kind of interview I say and the compliance man melts away Rothschild peels off his jacket to reveal a sombre suit and blue shirt with a collar about to fray I wonder not for the first time why aristocrats never wear new shirts and whom they get to wear them in His office he claims is suffering from dry rot and cannot be used So we sit in an elegant echoing room as beautiful and impersonal as heaven And interviewing Rothschild feels like interviewing God although rather less cosy He makes it clear without saying so that he has more important things to do than sit here politely answering my questions He could for example be saving a meadow for the nation in his work for the National Heritage Memorial Fund soon to be in receipt of millions of pounds from lottery funds Or he could be meeting Yasser Arafat as he did a few weeks ago on behalf of the Institute of Jewish Affairs where he is now president an intriguing post as he is only half Jewish Or perhaps he could be entertaining the Princess of Wales who has warmed to him since he spent £16 million on Spencer House Rothschild cultivates a publicity shy image But his co-chairman Sir Mark Weinberg has persuaded him to see me to highlight the growth of their company Rothschild Assurance Rothschild suggests we also link the interview to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mayer Amschel Rothschild founder of the Rothschild dynasty There is to be a celebration in February at his grave in Germany attended by Chancellor Kohl among others This is fine by me The next day I receive a letter from his publicist formally requesting that the anniversary be given as a reason And when I ring him to check over a few points he asks if we can put it in the headline has always regarded himself as the quintessential Rothschild of his says an old friend he also sees himself as the Rothschild in And this episode shows the continuing rivalry between Jacob and his cousin Sir Evelyn who has headed the family bank FACT FILE Rothschild: so keen to promote the 250th anniversary celebrations of the founding father that he wanted it in our headline Photograph: Nick Rogers 1936 Born April 29 1957 Graduates from Oxford 1963 Joins NM Rothschild 1989 Takes RIT independent 1985 Chairman National Gallery 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