Jacob Rothschild, Lord Rothschild, who has died aged 87, combined a ruthlessly successful business career, following in the family tradition as a financier in the City of London, with philanthropic projects. These mainly centred on the arts and heritage, including the restoration of the dynasty’s enormous 19th-century replica of a French chateau Waddesdon, in the middle of the Buckinghamshire countryside.
Although he claimed that for a lot of his life he had lived without luxury – true up to a point following the acrimonious breakup of his parents’ marriage when he was nine – he had a gilded entrance into the family bank, and by last year his wealth, built on shrewd investments and an inheritance, was estimated to be worth at least £825m. He protested to an interviewer that he certainly knew how to open a tin of baked beans, but his portfolio also included the Eythrope estate next to Waddesdon, a share of a vineyard in France, a villa and 30-acre estate on Corfu and a house in Knightsbridge, London.
