Prior to his appointment as deputy chairman of BSkyB yesterday, Lord Jacob Rothschild was not a name many would have associated with the technology-driven business of pay-TV.
Neither, for that matter, would he have been considered a natural choice as chief mediator between BSkyB’s board, heavy with News Corp appointees, and its disgruntled institutional shareholders.
Rothschild, 67, is certainly a grandee, in both City and establishment terms. But he is also some thing of a maverick, who split from the main Rothschild banking dynasty 20 years ago after a row with his cousin, Sir Evelyn – choosing to plough his own furrow in the world of fund management and hedge fund investment.
Through his various guises of RIT Capital, St James’s Place Capital and J Rothschild Assurance, Rothschild has often exhibited a buccaneering tendency that has taken him – and his clients’ money – into some of the world’s riskiest financial markets.
Most notably and most recently, his name has been associated with Russia, with Rothschild named at the weekend as a central figure at Yukos, the oil group whose chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, is in prison facing charges of fraud and tax evasion. It seems Khodorkovsky, fearing arrest, had given power of attorney over his shares to a group of individuals including Rothschild.
Khodorkovsky had been a major donor to the Hermitage exhibition at Somerset House, one of a number of artistic and architectural projects Rothschild has pursued. He is a former chairman of the National Gallery and the lottery-funded National Heritage Memorial Fund.
His upbringing – Eton, Oxford, and the Life Guards – may sound archetypally privileged, but in the 70s and 80s he was regarded as one of the sharpest brains in the City. He was involved in a string of big deals but is most famous for one that did not succeed, a pounds 13bn bid for BAT with James Goldsmith and Kerry Packer.
