Can Rothschild reinvent itself?t
Baron David's survival strategy
How much has Rothschild been influenced by the Barings crash?
Sir Evelyn de Rothschild: We call ourselves merchant banks, but each of the remaining merchant banks is completely different in what we do. For example, we are the only merchant bank that has gold dealing within the bank. We have not been as strong in asset management as Schroders or Flemings, and we still are in commercial banking. One has to look at the costs related to the area you are in. Some banks went into the gilt market, not very successfully if I may say so, and then withdrew. I think Warburgs is a much bigger example than Barings of a merchant bank whose overheads got too high, and they were forced to take action, even though they had a very successful operation. We've always been very careful about [controlling] our overheads and we have only about 3,000 people worldwide. The big thing about Barings [is that] when you have bank failures of whatever sort - whether it is management failure or fraud - any bank always looks internally at its systems. You can't be complacent enough to think you can't do better in risk controls.