the world of private banking

14
THE WORLD OF PRIVAtE BANKING
However, when a formal legal partnership contract was drawn up in September
1810, its preamble explicitly stated that ‘a trading company already existed’ in
which Mayer Amschel, Amschel and Salomon were the ‘associates’ (Associés).
The principal function of the 1810 agreement was to make Carl a partner, giving
him a 30,000 gulden share of the total capital of 800,000 compared with Mayer
Amschel’s 370,000, Amschel’s 185,000 and Salomon’s 185,000; and to guarantee
that James would become a partner (also with a share worth 30,000 gulden) when
he attained his majority. Nathan had to be left out as he was in ‘enemy’ territory.
In this, and in other respects, Mayer Amschel remained in charge: he alone had the
right to withdraw his capital from the firm during the period of the agreement, he
alone had the right to hire and fire employees of the firm, and his unmarried sons
could only marry with his permission.
In other respects, however, the agreement would act as a model for future
agreements between the brothers and their descendants for most of the nineteenth
century. Profits were divided in proportion to capital shares, no partner was to
engage in business independently of the others and the agreement was to run for a
fixed period of years (in this case, ten). The most striking clause in the agreement
stated what would happen were one of the partners to die. Each solemnly renounced
the rights of his wife, children or their guardians to contest in any way the amount
of money agreed by the surviving partners to be the deceased partner’s share of
the capital. Specifically, his widow and heirs were to be denied any access to
the firm’s books and correspondence. 46 This was the first formal statement of that
distinctive and enduring rule which effectively excluded Rothschild women – born
Rothschilds as well as those who married into the family – from the core of the
business: the hallowed ledgers and letters. Mayer Amschel’s revised will, drawn up
as he lay dying in 1812, reinforced this principle. 47 In practice, Rothschild women
were never entirely excluded from business affairs. Caroline, Salomon’s wife,
became so involved in Nathan’s massive speculative purchases of British stock in
1816 that she began having dreams about consol prices. 48 Nathan’s wife Hannah
always took a keen interest in the business. Certain in-laws – Moses Montefiore,
for example – also played an important role in Rothschild operations as clerks
(managers), brokers or agents. However, the formal exclusion of women and inlaws
from the partnership and its accounts was always maintained: they literally
had to sit outside while the partners deliberated at the occasional ‘summits’ which
regulated the collective affairs of the various houses.
There was never strict equality between the partners or the houses. According
to the preamble of the 1815 agreement, the brothers’ ‘partnership property in
London, at Paris and at Frankfurt on the Main consists of the sum of £500,000 or
46
RAL, RFamFD/3, Gesellschaftsvertrag [between] Mayer Amschel Rothschild,
Amschel, Salomon and Carl, 27 Sept. 1810. Cf. Berghoeffer, Meyer Amschel, pp. 165ff.
47
Berghoeffer, Meyer Amschel, pp. 201ff.
48
RAL, T32/125/2, XI/109/5A, Salomon and his wife, Brighton, to Nathan, Hannah
and Davidson, 16 Aug. 1816.