the world of private banking
the world of private banking
the world of private banking
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HEREDItARy CALLING, INHERItED REFINEmENt 267<br />
Earlier, from <strong>the</strong> inter-war years, <strong>the</strong>re had been one particularly interesting<br />
merchant-banker outsider who had made it to <strong>the</strong> very top. ‘He is absolutely<br />
straight, very level headed, not a talker, but goes and does things and does <strong>the</strong>m<br />
well’, Farrer informed an American banker shortly before Edward Peacock, <strong>the</strong><br />
son <strong>of</strong> a Canadian schoolmaster, joined Barings in 1924. ‘He has <strong>of</strong> course had a<br />
different upbringing from any <strong>of</strong> us here’, Farrer conceded to ano<strong>the</strong>r correspondent<br />
about <strong>the</strong> new recruit, ‘but <strong>the</strong> set <strong>of</strong> his mind and all his ways are on <strong>the</strong> same<br />
lines as ours.’ 13 Peacock quickly established himself as <strong>the</strong> power behind <strong>the</strong><br />
throne, and after Revelstoke’s death in 1929 he was acknowledged as <strong>the</strong> bank’s<br />
leader, especially in <strong>the</strong> areas <strong>of</strong> international and corporate finance. Cecil Baring<br />
may have <strong>private</strong>ly called him ‘The Paycock’, but nei<strong>the</strong>r he nor <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r active<br />
members <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> family imagined that <strong>the</strong>y could do without him. 14<br />
Peacock was also at <strong>the</strong> centre <strong>of</strong> a fascinating moment in merchant <strong>banking</strong><br />
history – a moment that makes one realize <strong>the</strong> importance <strong>of</strong> nuance, prejudice and<br />
cultural assumptions, and equally <strong>the</strong> limitations <strong>of</strong> a baldly sociological, headcounting,<br />
what one might call Who’s Who approach. It came in <strong>the</strong> autumn <strong>of</strong><br />
1942, some eight months after <strong>the</strong> death <strong>of</strong> Lionel de Rothschild left Rothschilds<br />
(already badly hit by <strong>the</strong> Credit Anstalt smash <strong>of</strong> 1931) in a parlous financial<br />
position – almost certainly, from <strong>the</strong> evidence <strong>of</strong> Norman’s diary, dependent on<br />
<strong>the</strong> Bank <strong>of</strong> England in order to stay afloat. Schroders was also in a poor state <strong>the</strong>n,<br />
and on 8 September that bank’s Albert Pam called on Norman in order to float an<br />
idea. ‘Why shd not Schroders, Rs & Barings amalgamate?’ recorded Norman’s<br />
diary in typically clipped fashion. ‘Or why shd not Barings take over <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r<br />
2?’ Two days later, Norman put <strong>the</strong> idea to Peacock: ‘?BB & Co + JHS & Co<br />
+ NMR & S:; he will consider’. Peacock duly returned three weeks later with<br />
Barings’ answer: ‘BB & Co not willing, after consideration, to join with JHS &<br />
Co, whose methods are impossible and unpopularity great – nor with NMR & S<br />
who are entirely a Jewish family concern’. 15 Some twenty years after Barings,<br />
Rothschilds and Schroders had become <strong>the</strong> City’s so-called ‘Trinity’, doing a<br />
series <strong>of</strong> important issues toge<strong>the</strong>r on a consortium basis, this was a strikingly<br />
personal basis on which to reach a not unmomentous decision. At <strong>the</strong> very least it<br />
serves, to reiterate, as a warning against simplistic readings <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> City elite.<br />
The episode in 1942 is one <strong>of</strong> many not mentioned, let alone illuminated,<br />
in A Gilt-edged Life, <strong>the</strong> charming, recently published memoirs <strong>of</strong> Edmund de<br />
Rothschild, a benevolent man with few enemies. His fa<strong>the</strong>r Lionel liked to call<br />
himself ‘a banker by hobby, a gardener by pr<strong>of</strong>ession’, and young Edmund after<br />
his birth in 1916 was brought up in country-houses in Hampshire. Fishing and<br />
13<br />
Barings Archives, Dep 33.21, 23 May 1922, Dep.33.22, 9 Nov. 1923.<br />
14<br />
J. Orbell, Baring Bro<strong>the</strong>rs & Co., Limited: a History to 1939 (<strong>private</strong>ly published by<br />
Baring Bro<strong>the</strong>rs, 1985), pp. 82–3; D. Pollen, I Remember, I Remember (<strong>private</strong>ly published,<br />
1983), p. 229.<br />
15<br />
Bank <strong>of</strong> England Archives, ADM 20/31, 15 Apr. 1942, 8 Sept. 1942, 10 Sept. 1942,<br />
2 Oct. 1942.