Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy - Eamon Javers [14]
From their earliest days, the Rothshilds understood the importance of combining finance and intelligence. Nathanial coordinated high-stakes financial deals with his four brothers on the continent, who were based in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. Through couriers, clients, and confidants, they developed an elaborate intelligence network that spread across Europe. Nathan Rothschild arranged for money to be shipped to the duke of Wellington’s armies during their epic battle against Napoleon. In 1815, Rothschild knew of Wellington’s spectacular defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo an entire day before the British government itself was informed.
In 1875, Nathan’s son Lionel raised enough capital for the British government to acquire a major interest in the Suez Canal. And in 1885, Nathan Mayer Rothschild II became Baron Rothschild. Over the next fifty years, the family grew and prospered, branching into railroads, mining, and science. Two branches of the family in France became active in the wine industry, founding Château Mouton Rothschild, which produces one of the world’s finest clarets; and Château Lafite Rothschild, which produces elite premier cru wines.
Nat is the only son of four children. He attended Eton and Wadham College, Oxford. An extremely privileged young college student, he joined the Bullingdon Club, a rowdy all-male drinking society.
After college in 1995, he began his career in New York at Gleacher and Company, whose founder was a friend of Lord Rothschild. The same year, Nat married the socialite Annabelle Neilson, but their riotous relationship ended in divorce three years later. While in New York, Rothschild met Timothy Barakett, then just twenty-nine and a few years older than Nat. Barakett was raising money for a new hedge fund, Atticus Capital. He eventually made the young Rothschild a partner in his fund and set him loose to leverage the Rothschild family name and connections to raise money for Atticus. Nat bore down on business, and the fund achieved astonishing success until the crash of 2008, which hit Atticus, and scores of hedge funds like it, very hard.
Still, Barakett had leaped to the top of the hedge fund universe, ranking number seven in the trade publication Alpha magazine’s survey of the best paid fund managers of 2007, with a personal take of $750 million. Another partner at Atticus, David Slager, ranked number thirteen, with single-year earnings of $450 million. Rothschild himself tied for thirty-eighth place, earning $250 million that year. In 2007, the reporter Landon Thomas Jr. of the New York Times quoted Peter Munk, the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold, who overcame his early skepticism and agreed to Nat’s entreaties to invest in Atticus. “This kid is special,” Munk told the Times. “It’s back to when they were ruling the world.”
The Rothschilds of old bestrode the globe and saw political leaders come to them for money. Nat Rothschild continues that tradition today, maintaining houses in Paris, London, Moscow, and Greece. He’s said to be an adviser to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who controls the Russian company Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum company. In March 2008, Rothschild and his father hosted the Republican presidential candidate John McCain at a fund-raiser at Spencer House on Saint James’s Place in London, the lavish estate built for the ancestors of Princess Diana. Under American campaign law, foreigners can’t contribute to presidential candidates, but they can host events. For the invited American donors, attendance at the Rothschild fund-raiser cost between $1,000 and the campaign maximum, $2,300.
With connections like that, Nick Day