Edmond de Rothschild

French financier and member of the legendary Rothschild banking family. Baron Edmond was noted for working rather independently from the other members of his family, and he was rumored to be the wealthiest.

The son of Baron Maurice de Rothschild and Baroness Noemie Halphen Rothschild, he was the grandson of the business founder, Edmond de Rothschild. His grandfather had invested millions of dollars in the development of Jewish Palestine. Baron Maurice heavily invested his fortune in the United States, and upon his father’s death, Baron Edmond reportedly inherited a billion francs (about $200 million). Although he remained a French citizen throughout his life, he spent his childhood in Switzerland after his father had been declared a non-citizen of France for refusing to vote for the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.

After earning his law degree in Paris, Baron Edmond spent three years working with the family bank, but eventually he left to form the Compagnie Financiere, set up specifically to manage his personal fortune. Concentrating his business activities in Switzerland, he was relatively unknown outside the banking world until 1980 when Francois Mitterrand came into power in France. Although most of his investments were kept private, the center of his activities was probably the Banque Privee in Geneva.

Baron Edmond married twice. In 1963, after finalizing the divorce from his first wife, he married Nadine Lhopitallier. As a member of high society, he was expected to marry a cultured Jewish woman, but his new wife was an actress and former model. She had only a grade school education, and most shocking of all for his position, she was a Roman Catholic. After they wed, she converted to Judaism. They had one son, Benjamin.

He suffered from severe emphysema for many years, and Baron Edmond died from his lung disease on 2 November 1997, Geneva.