The Rothschild story: A golden era ends for a secretive dynasty

This week NM Rothschild & Sons pulled out of trading in gold, the commodity that made their name in banking.
The news that the bankers Rothschild are to withdraw from the gold market, in which they have been a major player for two centuries, has been hailed as the end of an era.
In one sense, of course, it is. This was the company that smuggled gold coins across the English Channel to finance the Duke of Wellington's advance through France to his final triumph at Waterloo over Napoleon (who, it turned out, had also borrowed money from the Rothschilds).
But in another way it marks out the continuation of an even older tradition - the ability of the family which has founded one of the world's largest private banking dynasties to sustain their secretive fortune, which industry insiders count not in billions but in trillions, and keep it within the family.
Secrecy has been a hallmark of the Rothschilds from the outset. Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the son of an itinerant money lender and goldsmith who settled in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1744, specialised not just in clever accounting practices but also kept secret books and subterranean vaults which he ensured were never the privy of auditor, lawyer or taxman.
Independent UK

Comments

[Askan]

they bothered to make a move & have done so well for themselves where others sit and watch blinded by the light :)