Guy de Rothschild

1909 - 2007  (97 years)    Has 24 ancestors and 6 descendants in this family tree.

• Name	Guy de Rothschild
  Birth	21 Jun 1909	Paris, Île-de-France, France
  Gender	Male
  Death	13 Jun 2007
  Siblings	3 Siblings
  1. Baron Alphonse de Rothschild,   b. 1906   d. 1911  (Age 5 years) + 2. Guy de Rothschild,   b. 21 Jun 1909, Paris, Île-de-France, France d. 13 Jun 2007  (Age 97 years) ▻ Baroness Alix Schey von Koromla,  m. 1937 ;   Baroness Marie-Hélène van Zuylen van Nijevelt,  m. 1957   3. Living ▻ Robert Calmann-Levy,  m. 1930 ;   Gregor Piatigorski,  m. 1937 + 4. Baroness Bethsabée de Rothschild,   b. 1914   d. 1999  (Age 85 years) ▻ Donald Bloomingdale,  m. 1948
  Person ID	I303287	Geneagraphie
  Last Modified	15 Jun 2007

  
  

  Father	Baron Edouard de Rothschild,   b. 1868   d. 30 Jun 1949 (Age 81 years)
  Mother	Germaine Alice Halphen,   b. 1884   d. 1975 (Age 91 years)
  Marriage	1905
  Family ID	F121689	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	Baroness Alix Schey von Koromla,   b. 1911   d. 1982 (Age 71 years)
  Marriage	1937
  Divorce	1956
  Children	+ 1. Living
  Family ID	F121698	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	22 Sep 2001

  
  

  Family 2	Baroness Marie-Hélène van Zuylen van Nijevelt,   b. 17 Nov 1927   d. 1996 (Age 68 years)
  Marriage	1957
  Guy had to resign the presidency of the Jewish Community in France. Countess Nicolai needed a papal dispensation---a privilege always reserved for the most exalted mismatings---to annul the bond that stood between her and marriage to a Jew. For the first time in French Rothschild history, the head of a house married a woman outside the faith.
  Children	1. Living
  Family ID	F121696	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	22 Sep 2001

  
  

• Event Map	Click to hide
  		Birth - 21 Jun 1909 - Paris, Île-de-France, France  = Link to Google Earth
  Pin Legend	: Address       : Location       : City/Town       : County/Shire       : State/Province       : Country       : Not Set

  
  

• Photos

  Photos (Log in)

  
  

• Notes

  Was caught in the Dunkirk trap. He escaped; managed to reach New York in 1941; went to England when the Free French formed, was torpedoed while crossing the Atlantic, swam for three hours, and was rescued by a British destroyer; executed a number of confidential missions for de Gaulle (and ever since has had close ties with the General); participated in two months of front-line fighting after D-day; and finished the war as adjutant to de Gaulle's military governor of Paris. The French Rothschilds have become richer faster since Baron Guy assumed the reins at the death of his father Edouard. Guy, too, wields the accelerated energies of the present-day clan, even when it comes to his horses. He brought to an end a humiliation---and price depreciation---they had suffered for years. During the occupation the Germans had crossed Rothschild mares with the stallions of Marcel Boussac, France's textile king and Rothschild's greatest rival at Longchamps. Afterwards, Monsieur Boussac pronounced these unions unauthorized and irregular. Old Baron Edouard de Rothschild could not get his colts registered in the Stud Book, the equine Almanach de Gotha. But when Guy took over the stables, he applied a pressure so relentless that the French Stud Book did a very rare thing: it changed its mind. Today all Rothschild horses have been fully legitimized. With similar aggressiveness Guy has fortified the position of de Rothschild Freres as the largest private bank in France. His main instrument here is the Compagnie du Nord, the railroad network which became Family property after the dynast James financed it into existence. Like all French lines, the Compagnie du Nord was nationalized in 1938. In return, Rothschild received 270,000 shares of the French State Railways and a seat on the board. But the government took over only physical assets, such as track and rolling stock. Subsidiary and affiliated firms of the Compagnie du Nord, as well as the corporate apparatus, remained in Rothschild hands. Through it The Family controlled---and, after the Nazi nightmare, controls again----great interests in metal, mining and chemical industries. And yet it was not until Guy took over that these powerful levers began to show their full potency. Since 1950 the Paris house has performed brilliantly in the forefront of the European boom. "He has started a new concept here," said a high aide at the bank. "Formerly Rothschild used to be the sole investor in a new enterprise, developed it alone, and then sold some shares of it while keeping control. Today we are a bigger bank than ever, but the funds required to start a major new company are so much bigger still that no single private outfit can finance all of it. That's why Rothschild's used to stay aloof from some new developments after the first big war. Now they are in the thick of it. Guy uses the concept of participation; he accepts other people's money from the very start; he acts as initiator and packager---and as guarantor. Apart from his share, he invests the unique moral capital of his name. And of course he keeps strictly in control." As head of the French house, he was in natural rapport with the head of the state. General de Gaulle employed Georges Pompidou, Guy's right-hand man, as one of the republic's key financial advisers, and later appointed him prime minister. And there were strong personal ties between France's greatest general and her most influential banker. In Guy's photograph album, one hunt tally card records that Baron Rothschild once bagged forty-nine pheasants at Marly-le-Roi, de Gaulle's personal shoot. Guy's partner was his cousin, Elie In May 1981 Francois Mitterrand was elected president. His Socialist program included the nationalization of all private banks above a certain size. This did of course apply to the Rothschild bank, even on symbolic grounds: the Socialists had, after all, engaged in a bitter struggle with Georges Pompidou, one of that bank's former chief executives. The Banque Rothschild, a credit institution with four billion francs on deposit and a balance of almost fourteen billion, with two thousand employees and seventy thousand clients, became the "Europeenne de Banque." For the termination of its one hundred and fifty years of banking history, the family was compensated---with a sum that varies depending on the source ---between one hundred million and five hundred million francs (the family will no longer comment on this). In any case, the sum was regarded as far too low for the true value of the institution. Not only did the government, as Guy de Rothschild points out, gain "the position of majority stockholder in all the enterprises in which we held the majority"---and this included important industrial concerns, shipping companies and much else---but it also acquired its immaterial value, the goodwill of his house, for which no compensation was made: "If; for instance, one wanted to start IBM all over again, one would have to spend much more than IBM's stock market value in New York." It was a hard but not entirely unexpected setback. Fourteen years before the Socialist election victory, when the enterprise had been turned into a public business bank, Guy had insisted that it would lose the right to use the name Rothschild as soon as the family was no longer in charge. Thus the name change was not merely a symbolic act---the French government had no choice in the matter. And it became apparent, soon enough, that the loss of that name also meant a loss of financial flair. In addition, Guy and Cousin Alain had prudently arranged for their and their English cousins' participation in the Zurich branch to be considered a private affair---a fairly lucrative one at that, and out of the French government's reach. Then there was New Court Securities: relieved from his post at the French bank, Guy was now able to attend to the New York investment firm's business with renewed energy. Nevertheless, Guy de Rothschild wanted to have the last word in his dealings with the State of France (even though it later turned out not to be a last word, after all). In the summer of 1981, the front page of Le Monde carried his manifesto against the new government. It was also a historical review of his family's relationship with the various regimes of the country. His topics ranged from the construction of railroads in the nineteenth century to experiences with the popular front, from traditional accusations of the Rothschilds' alleged "hypertrophy of capitalism" to citations of the services many generations of the family had rendered the common good. "The French Rothschilds," Guy wrote, "made the mistake to believe that they could evolve with their era and their country. They had reason to regret that." The article ends with these words: "A Jew under Petain, a pariah under Mitterrand, I have had enough. To start over, from ruins, in the course of one human life---that is too much to ask. Forced to resign, I go on strike." In the United States, a new era had begun. During his two years in office, President Reagan tirelessly warbled the praises of private enterprise and inveighed against too much government interference. To the ears of someone whose bank had just been nationalized, such words must have heralded a bright future. The media, for its part, concerned with the doings of the rich and famous, celebrated this excellent opportunity to ring in a new decade of opulence: at long last, a genuine Rothschild had arrived in Manhattan! And moved into a pied-a-terre that was far less modest than the term implied. Reading the magazine articles and admiring their many pages of color pictures of those new luxurious quarters, one might have assumed that the Baron had retired to lead a pleasant life of leisure---just to annoy Mitterrand. One would have been quite mistaken. The head of the French clan used this opportunity to further business interests, emphasizing once again that the family had waited far too long: "My grandfather Alphonse visited the United States in 1848. Upon his return, he urged his relatives to establish themselves here. It is more than regrettable that his advice was not taken. Our engagement with American finance begins literally a hundred years too late." That did not keep it from being intense. The Rothschilds undertook a collective restructuring of New Court Securities. It began with the firing of its chief executive, John P. Birkelund, who had wanted greater control over the firm. Then the name was changed. From 1982 on, the branch operated as "Rothschild Incorporated" out of offices in Rockefeller Center. With the new name came a new emphasis, shifting from venture capital finance to the emerging field of mergers and acquisitions. Making all these decisions, Guy de Rothschild did not act alone but in concord with his English relatives, whose financial participation in the buildup of the U.S. firm amounted to fifty percent. We should now look back across the ocean---and the Channel---to consider the changes that had occurred in London since the relatively calm fifties.