Guy de Rothschild

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.

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; he also had two younger sisters, Jacqueline and Bethsabée.

Half of his great-grandparents were Rothschilds.

Baron Guy Édouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild (21 May 1909 – 12 June 2007) was a French banker and member of the Rothschild banking family of France.

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.

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.

At the end of World War II, Guy de Rothschild returned to the bank's offices at rue Laffitte in Paris in 1944.

He won the Grand Prix de Sud-Ouest in 1948.

Guy de Rothschild married twice:

On his father's death in 1949, Guy de Rothschild took formal control of the business.

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 Rothschild, with branches throughout France.

In 1961, Guy de Rothschild took over as Chairman of Imetal S.A. in which the family had a substantial stake.

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.

Between 1967 and 1979, he was the chairman of the French Banque Rothschild, nationalized by the French government in 1982, and maintained investments in other French and foreign companies, including Imerys.

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.

In France, Rothschild developed the country's largest private uranium mining company, the Compagnie Française des Minerais d'Uranium.

After his second marriage, Guy de Rothschild renovated the Château de Ferrières, using it to put on lavish balls in the early 1970s, before donating it to the University of Paris in 1975.

The same year, he bought the Hôtel Lambert on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris, the top floors of which became his Paris residence.

He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1985.