Edmond Adolphe Maurice Jules Jacques Rothschild Obituary

 Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the French-born financier who was said to be the wealthiest of the surviving descendants of the legendary banking family, died in Geneva on Sunday. He was 71.

The cause of death was emphysema, The Associated Press reported.

Born in Paris in 1926 and a lifelong French citizen, Baron Edmond was taken to Switzerland as a child after his father, a senator in France, had refused to vote for the pro-Nazi Vichy regime led by Marshal Philippe Petain in World War II and had been declared a noncitizen. Because he concentrated his business activity in Switzerland and was rarely part of the brilliant social life his cousins Elie, Guy and Alain led in Paris, Edmond de Rothschild was relatively unknown outside European banking until the Socialists led by Francois Mitterrand came to power in France in 1980.

When the new Government moved to nationalize the Rothschild Bank, Guy de Rothschild reacted with characteristic Rothschild flair. A Jew under Petain, a pariah under Mitterrand, he wrote in a much publicized letter, for me that's enough. He left for New York.

Baron Edmond's much smaller bank in Paris, La Compagnie Financiere Edmond de Rothschild, was not nationalized and he began to be known as the Rothschild who stayed. In 1992, Cie. Financiere was said to have about $2 billion in total assets. Paradoxically, the bank soon became known for its expertise in helping the Government divest itself of nationalized businesses.

Baron Edmond always worked independently of the other Rothschilds, but when Guy's son David founded a new Rothschild bank in Paris in 1982, Baron Edmond took a 10 percent stake. He held a similar position in N. M. Rothschild, the family's British branch. The British and French banks have since merged.

Most of Baron Edmond's investments were private and their interrelationships complex. But the linchpin of his activities was said to be his Banque Privee in Geneva, a vast holding company with an estimated $17 billion under management in 1995. Other interests included the Banca Privata Solari & Blum in Lugano, Switzerland, the Israel General Bank and the Caesarea Development Company in Tel Aviv, the Israel European Company and the Banque de Gestion Edmond de Rothschild, both in Luxembourg, along with interests in Alpine hotels, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. in South Africa, Club Mediterranee, several publishing houses in Paris and a television company in Luxembourg.

In 1973, he bought a major interest in the Bank of California, based in Los Angeles, which then had $4 billion in assets and 80 branches. The bank was sold in 1985 to Japan's Mitsubishi Bank for about three times the original purchase price.

His wine interests included a share in Domaines Barons Rothschild, which owns Chateau Lafite-Rothschild and Chateau Reussic in Bordeaux as well as parts of wine properties in Portugal, Chile and California. He owned Chateau Clarke, another Bordeaux wine property, and several years ago turned ownership of Chateau Malmaison, which adjoins Clarke, over to his wife, Baroness Nadine de Rothschild.

Among his lesser holdings were a chain of flower shops in Paris and a 4,000-acre property east of Paris where he raised cattle and produced prize-winning cheese. He was also a major investor in the Savour Club, a large mail-order wine business.

Edmond Adolphe Maurice Jules Jacques de Rothshcild was the son of Baron Maurice de Rothschild and Baroness Noemie Halphen Rothschild. He was the grandson of the Edmond de Rothschild who invested untold millions of dollars in the development of Jewish Palestine. Maurice de Rothschild enhanced his own fortune with investments in the United States and reportedly left his son Edmond a billion francs -- about $200 million.

After taking a law degree in Paris, Baron Edmond spent three years with the Rothschild Bank, then quit to form the Compagnie Financiere, specifically to manage his own fortune.

In 1963, after divorcing his first wife, he married Nadine Lhopitallier, startling French society. Rothschild wives were expected to be cultured women of means and, invariably, Jewish. Miss Lhopitallier was a film starlet and former model with a grade school education -- and she was a Roman Catholic.

According to contemporary accounts, they had met at a social event when he remarked that the diamond she was wearing was beautiful but not real. Later, seated beside him at dinner, she watched him open a small pillbox. Inside she saw a diamond ring. I don't doubt that it's real, she said, but isn't it in the wrong place?

Three years later they were married. She quickly converted to Judaism. It would not have been possible to have the name Rothschild and be a Catholic, she said later. Nor would it be right for the son of a Rothschild to be half-Jewish and half-Catholic.

Baroness Nadine has written seven books, including several novels and one best seller in France, a memoir called The Baroness Will Return at Five.

They had one son, Benjamin, now 34, a graduate of Pepperdine University near Los Angeles. In recent years, Benjamin's name has been incorporated into many of his father's holdings, including the holding company Benjamin and Edmond de Rothschild S.A. in Geneva and the wine business, the Compagnie Vinicole des Barons Edmond et Benjamin de Rothschild.

His wife and his son are Baron Edmond's only survivors. Services were to be private. Burial will be at Chateau Clarke, in Listrac, near Bordeaux.

Baron Edmond's principal residence was the Chateau de Pregny on a hill overlooking Lac Leman outside Geneva. In Paris, he lived in a town house facing the gardens of the Presidential Palace. In addition, he owned homes in Israel, the United States and the South of France. Given modern limits imposed by taxation, he was as generous a benefactor of Israel and Jewish causes as his legendary grandfather had been earlier in the century.

Twenty years ago, in an interview in a French business magazine, he said that of all the countries in the world where he did business, the United States appealed to him most. For me it symbolizes free enterprise, where a man is responsible only to himself, a place of endless opportunity and limitless space, he said. Then he added, I am fundamentally a citizen of the world, devoted to France, where I was born, to Switzerland, where I was made welcome, and to Israel because I am a Jew.