Nathaniel Philip Rothschild

Early life and education

Nathaniel Philip Rothschild is the youngest of four children and only son and heir apparent of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, and Serena Mary Dunn. His mother was from a Christian background, while his father was raised Jewish (Rothschild's paternal grandfather was born into a Jewish family, while Rothschild's paternal grandmother had converted to Judaism upon marriage). His maternal grandparents were Lady Mary Sybil St. Clair-Erskine (daughter of James St Clair-Erskine, 5th Earl of Rosslyn) and Sir Philip Gordon Dunn, 2nd Baronet, whose father was the Canadian financier and tycoon, Sir James Dunn.

He was educated at Colet Court (in the same year as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne), Eton College and Wadham College, Oxford, where he read history, gaining a 2:1. Rothschild was a member of the Bullingdon Club as an undergraduate, at the same time as George Osborne. He is currently completing an MSc degree in Addiction Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Career

After graduating, Rothschild joined fund manager Lazard's, then went to work at Gleacher, the corporate finance firm now owned by NatWest. In 2000, he occupied a variety of positions - and holds a 50 per cent stake - in NR Atticus, Atticus Management and Atticus Capital, a hedge fund, which controls funds approaching £312m.

Rothschild is the former chairman of Vivarte, a pan-European retailer and owner of the Kookai clothing brand. Appointed in 2000 following NR Atticus's acquisition of a 32.9% stake, in what was widely regarded as the first hostile proxy fight in France, he led the group, though its successful restructuring and subsequent sale to PAI Partners, a French private equity firm in 2004.

He became an alternate director of RIT Capital Partners plc in March 2000, and a full non-executive director in 2004 until 2010 when he stepped down from the RIT board to focus on his other activities. He remains a substantial direct shareholder of RIT and a 35% beneficial shareholder of Five Arrows Limited, a Rothschild holding company whose major asset is shares in RIT.

Nat Rothschild is a member of the Belfer Center's International Council at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Barrick Gold Corporation.

Investments

In 2000, The Observer wrote that, in addition to Rothschild's then declared inheritance of £500million, his actual inheritance "hidden in a series of trusts in Switzerland is rumored to be worth £40bn". Via NR Investments Ltd., his principal investment company, Nathaniel Rothschild was a cornerstone investor in the United Company RUSAL Initial public offering in January 2010. At the same time Rothschild bought $40million of Glencore bonds convertible into shares upon an IPO.

Also Rothschild's NR Investments Ltd. is the largest shareholder (26.5% End December 2009) of Volex, a Manchester-based electrical cable maker. Furthermore Nathaniel Rothschild owns an 11% share in BR Properties, a Brazilian property company, and has an interest in various property developments in Eastern Europe (Montenegro, Romania and Ukraine).

In July 2010, Vallar Plc, a Jersey-incorporated investment vehicle founded by Nathaniel Rothschild, raised £707.2 million ($1.07 billion) in an Initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. Vallar is led by Rothschild and James Campbell, a former Anglo American PLC coal and base metals chief.

In November 2010, Vallar announced it was buying stakes for $3bn in two listed Indonesia thermal coal (used for power stations) producers for a combination of cash and new Vallar shares, with a view to combining them to create the largest exporter of thermal coal to China, India, and the other emerging economies of Asia. The transaction closed as planned on 8 April 2011.

In 2011, Vallar plc was renamed Bumi plc.

In June 2011, Rothschild and Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP plc, listed a successor vehicle to Vallar called Vallares (LSE:VLRS) in London Stock Exchange, raising $2.2 billion. Essentially, this was identical in every respect to the first vehicle, which was metals and mining focused, except that the new entity would try to acquire oil & gas assets.

In September 2011, Vallares announced a 50/50 all stock merger with Turkish Energy Champion Genel Energy, valued at $4.2billion.

In 2011, The Sunday Times estimated his personal fortune to be $1.6billion.

In June 2015, Rothschild abandoned his investment in Indonesia’s Asia Resource Minerals following a series of disputes with his co-investors, selling his 17.2 percent stake in the company to Coal Energy Ventures.

Personal life

In 1994, he married to socialite and model Annabelle Neilson; they divorced in 1997. Rothschild lived for a time in New York before settling in Switzerland in 2000, and according to the Swiss business magazine Bilanz he is a resident of Klosters in Graubunden.

The racehorse Nathaniel, winner of the 2011 King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes, was bred and owned by Rothschild's mother and is named after him.

Controversies

In October 2008, he was the subject of much press speculation when it was revealed that Labour politician Peter Mandelson and the Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska had met when staying on a yacht moored near Corfu, in order to attend a party held by Rothschild. After speculation that this might constitute a conflict of interest for Mandelson, Rothschild wrote a letter to The Times alleging that another guest was Conservative Shadow-Chancellor George Osborne, who, Rothschild claimed, illicitly tried to solicit a donation from the Russian for his party.

Rothschild has been linked to the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

In February 2012 he lost his libel case with the Daily Mail who had accused him of being a "puppet master" in reporting about his foreign trips with Peter Mandelson.