(2 of 2)
Brokers & Fighters. Today the Rothschilds are backers of 100 major ventures as varied as the Transalpine Pipeline and the Churchill Falls Hydroelectric Project in Canada (TIME, Oct. 14); the Barings help to bankroll such clients as Britain's Courtaulds textile empire and the government of Portugal. Merchant bankers are the business world's greatest merger brokers and proxy fighters. Nobody profits more from this than London's Siegmund Warburg, German-born dollar scion of the 400-year-old banking clan, who in 1958-59 counseled Reynolds Metals in its successful fight with Alcoa for control of British Aluminium Ltd. So highly is Warburg's advice valued that he is retained simultaneously by Britain's two leading press tycoons, Cecil King and Roy Thomson.
Wechsberg's main point is that the merchant bankers nowadays are increasingly branching out of traditional finance to become all-round consultants and father-confessors. Germany's Hermann Abs, for example, is a director of 24 companies. The Lehman bankers, besides sitting on 200 corporate boards, have an investment advisory service handling accounts worth $2 billion. Nobody with less than $500,000 need apply.