Editor’s note: The original March 2022 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the sources cited below, and added what happened afterward. The original put the family’s net worth at $500 billion and listed totals for its properties, yachts, jets, hotels, cash and wine sales; we found no credible source for any of them. It also said scholars believed Nathan Rothschild caused a London stock market crash during the Napoleonic Wars and profited from it. That was not accurate, as explained below.
We could not find a reliable net worth for the Rothschild family. It is a family spread across several countries and more than two centuries, not one company or household. We found no family-wide estimate from Forbes, Bloomberg or another credible financial outlet, and none disclosed by the family.
Where the family’s history starts
The family’s house stood at No. 148 in the Judengasse, Frankfurt’s Jewish quarter, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia. Mayer Amschel Rothschild traded in coins and changed money, and later acted as agent for the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, as Encyclopaedia Judaica and NJOP describe it. His five sons ended up in Frankfurt, Vienna, London, Naples and Paris. Encyclopedia.com and the two sources above agree on the cities but give different years for the moves, and the Jewish Encyclopedia says it would be a mistake to credit the arrangement to Mayer Amschel’s foresight.
Nathan settled first in Manchester, then in London. During the Napoleonic Wars he helped the British government pay for Wellington’s army in Spain, according to Encyclopaedia Judaica and the Jewish Encyclopedia, which date its start differently, from 1808 to 1811. The Jewish Encyclopedia says the brothers were raised to the Austrian nobility in 1822, and Encyclopaedia Judaica gives the same year for Salomon.
A 1983 New York Review of Books essay by Gabriele Annan, reviewing a biography of James by Anka Muhlstein, gives the only franc figures we found: capital growing from 3 million francs in 1815 to 42 million in 1818, and a family worth 558 million francs by 1863. We could not confirm them in a second source. Encyclopedia.com gives the five houses’ combined capital in 1818 as nearly £1.8 million, and we have not reconciled the two. These are 19th-century amounts, not today’s wealth.
Why one number doesn’t work
Rothschild & Co is a Paris-listed investment bank, Reuters reported in 2023, and the family owned close to 55% of its shares at the end of 2022. That is a stake in one company, not a net worth. In its February 2023 statement, the company described Concordia as the holding company of the Rothschild family and its largest shareholder.
A target of conspiracy theories
The family has long been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories. The American Jewish Committee says a mid-19th-century French pamphlet, signed with the pseudonym Satan, falsely claimed Nathan witnessed the French defeat at Waterloo in 1815, and that he was not there and did not profit from the battle. An essay by historian Brian Cathcart, published by the Rothschild Archive, calls the story “more legend than fact,” finds no evidence of trickery and says any gains that week were probably modest. It notes that the story fed a 1940 Nazi propaganda film.
The Anti-Defamation League says condemnations of the family have had less to do with its behavior than with old stereotypes of Jews as disloyal and greedy. It cites a March 2018 claim by a Washington, D.C., council member that the Rothschilds were controlling the climate to create natural disasters.
What happened next
On Feb. 6, 2023, Rothschild & Co said Concordia intended to file a simplified tender offer at 48 euros a share, dividends attached, and to request a squeeze-out of remaining shareholders.
An Oct. 3, 2023 Concordia press release, posted on the French market regulator’s open-data site, said Concordia and the investors acting with it held 88.74% of the share capital after the offer, or 95.64% counting shares covered by options and transfer commitments. They included the holding company of Edouard de Rothschild and entities associated with the English Rothschild family. The release set squeeze-out compensation at 38.60 euros a share and said the shares would be delisted from Euronext Paris on Oct. 11, 2023. BFM Bourse, citing AFP reported the same price and a 95.65% stake. International Adviser had reported the 48-euro price would be adjusted for dividends paid.
