The Rothschilds Are On A Roll

`Schroder. Morgan Grenfell. Warburg. Fleming. Kleinwort Benson." Sitting in his modest Paris office a stone's throw from the Elysees Palace, David de Rothschild ticks off the names of once independent European investment houses that have slipped into the embrace of huge banks. "They're all gone. We and Lazard are the only ones left."

On the face of it, this harsh landscape bodes ill for the 58-year-old chairman of Rothschild & Cie Banque and his cousin, Evelyn de Rothschild, chairman of NM Rothschild & Sons, the clan's London-based branch. The fabled Rothschild name was once synonymous with prodigious wealth and power. Today, the Rothschilds head a group whose employees number just 550. The likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Citigroup dwarf it. Despite having its best year ever for mergers and acquisitions, the Rothschild group's total investment banking profit for 2000 will be barely $200 million, a fraction of what the big boys take home. With such competition, Rothschild "is going to be very fragile in the long run," says one prominent banker in Paris.