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The Second Continuation. The Rothschilds are a legend—and in recent times seemed destined to become a dead one. Hurt by high taxes and soft living, their between-wars generation failed to keep pace with modern banking methods, and the Rothschilds began to slip as effective powers in European banking. Today, the legend is very much alive—and being added to. Demonstrating the remarkable resiliency and power of survival that have enabled them to survive on their own family talent for two centuries, the Rothschilds are striking out in many new directions behind a silver curtain of discretion.
To make their new thrust even more powerful, the family's two main branches—in Paris and London—are starting to fuse again in a series of ventures, after a separation of more than half a century. Together they have created firms to put up buildings on the Continent, to make industrial loans in the U.S. and to tap the mineral wealth of an area in Canada bigger than England and Wales combined. The two also recently formed a joint company—appropriately called Second Continuation Ltd.—to give the French house a stake in the British bank and enable them jointly to exploit new opportunities on the Continent if and when Britain joins the Common Market. The sums involved are large, but in the contemporary world of great industrial consortiums, Rothschild money is no longer indispensable and controlling; cabinets no longer fall at their whim.
The family's reunion is due partly to the disappearance of an older and stiffer generation, but largely to the smoothing influence of today's most influential member, France's Guy Edouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild.* It was Guy (hard g as in geese) who, taking 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. Where the bank's previous aim in this century had been to pursue safe obscurity, under Guy it entered the mainstream of modern business.
A slim, handsome man with heavily lidded blue eyes, Guy, at 54, is every inch a Rothschild. He personifies much of what the family name stands for: a flair for business, a love of sport, a taste for wine, art and conversation. Dressed in the British-style clothes that he prefers (he also speaks perfect English), Guy blends well against many backdrops: he is a friend and confidant of some of France's ranking politicians, raises championship horses, is a good skier and a devoted golfer. With his handsome wife, he is ready to try the latest dances, from the twist to the hully gully. Most of all, he is dedicated to enlarging the fortunes of his bank, de Rothschild Frères (which is known to competitors as La Grande Dame des Banques Privées), and to forging the two family branches closer together. Says Guy: "Our relations are confident, cooperative and affectionate. There are going to be more things to do together."