Baron
Guy Édouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild (pronounced [baʁɔ̃ ɡi edwaːʁt‿alfɔ̃s pɔl də ʁɔt.ʃild]; 21 May 1909 – 12 June 2007) was a
French banker and member of the Rothschild family. He owned the bank Rothschild
Frères from 1967 to 1979, when it was nationalized by the French
government, and maintained possessions in other French and foreign companies
including Imerys. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall
of Fame in 1985. Baron
Guy de Rothschild was born in Paris, the son of Baron Édouard de
Rothschild (1868–1949) and his wife, the former Germaine Alice
Halphen (1884–1975). He has three siblings. Guy's elder brother, Édouard
Alphonse Émile Lionel (1906–1911), died at the age of four of appendicitis;[2] he also had two younger sisters, Jacqueline and Bethsabée. Half of his
great-grandparents were Rothschilds. He was a great-great grandson of the
German patriarch of the Rothschild family Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1743–1812),
who founded the family's banking in the 18th century in Frankfurt, Germany. He
grew up at his parents' townhouse on the corner of the rue de Rivoli and the Place de la Concorde in
Paris (a property once occupied by Talleyrand and now the United States
Embassy) and their country estate at Château de Ferrières, 25
miles east of Paris. Château de Ferrières is a massive house built to a design
by Joseph Paxton in the 1850s, based on
Paxton's earlier design of Mentmore Towers for Baron Mayer de Rothschild of
the English branch of the Rothschild family. He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and Lycée Louis-le-Grand in
Paris, and by private tutors. He undertook military service with the cavalry
at Saumur, and played golf for
France. He won the Grand Prix de
Sud-Ouest in 1948. In 1940, as a result of the German
occupation of France in World War II, Guy de Rothschild's parents
and sister Bethsabée fled France
and made their way to safety in New York City. Guy de Rothschild had enlisted in the French Army and was a company commander in the 3rd Light
Mechanised Division during the Battle of France in early 1940. After fighting the Nazis
at Carvin, he was part of the French Army that was forced to
retreat to Dunkirk. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre for
his actions on the beaches at Dunkirk, from where he was evacuated to England.
He immediately returned to France, landing at Brest, and taking charge of the family's office at La Bourboule, near Clermont-Ferrand. Under the Vichy government, his father and uncles were stripped of their
French nationality, removed from the register of the Légion d'honneur, and the
family was forced to sell its possessions. Rothschild managed to persuade the
buyers to grant options under which he would later be able to buy the family's
interests back. He left France again, via Spain and Portugal, to join his
parents in New York City. He joined the Free French Forces and
boarded the cargo ship, Pacific Grove, to travel back to Europe.
His ship was torpedoed and sunk in March 1943, and he was rescued after
spending 12 hours in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. In England, he joined the staff of General
Koenig at Supreme
Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force near Portsmouth. Guy de
Rothschild studied law at university then joined de Rothschild Frères in
1931 when it was being run by his father and a cousin, Robert de Rothschild, who
died in 1946. As part of his learning to manage the family's businesses, in
1933 he joined the executive board of their Northern Railway
Company. At the end of World War II, Guy de Rothschild returned to
the bank's offices at rue Laffitte in Paris in 1944. On his
father's death in 1949, Guy de Rothschild took formal control of the business.
Years later, Rothschild was on the cover of the 20 December 1963 issue of TIME magazine in a story that said he took "over the
family's French bank during the disorder of war and defeat, changed its
character from stewardship of the family fortune to expansive modern
banking." Following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and
great-grandfather, Guy de Rothschild served as a director of the Banque de France. On his father's death, he also inherited
part of Château Lafite-Rothschild but
did not run it. Georges Pompidou, who
would later become President and Prime Minister of France,
was recruited by Guy de Rothschild from a job as a teacher, and worked for him
from 1953 to 1962, during which time he became the general manager of the
Rothschild bank. The bank diversified, from investment management under De
Rothschild Frères to the deposit-taking Banque de Rothschild, with branches
throughout France. Guy was its president from 1968 to 1978. In 1968 Guy de
Rothschild became a partner at N M Rothschild & Sons, London, while cousin Sir Evelyn de Rothschild was
appointed a director of Banque Rothschild, Paris.