This is who calls the shots!
The usual gang all mentioned below - Rothschilds, Rockerfellers and the Morgans. An 'illuminating' article indeed.
Lord Rothschild takes £130m bet against the euro
Lord Rothschild has taken a near-£130m bet against the euro as fears continue to grow that the single currency will break up.
Lord Rothschild has led RIT since 1988 Photo: AP
By James Quinn
9:55PM BST 18 Aug 2012
The member of the banking dynasty has taken the position through RIT Capital Partners, the £1.9bn investment trust of which he is executive chairman.
The fact that the former investment banker, a senior member of the Rothschild family, has taken such a view will be seen as a further negative for the currency.
The latest omen follows news in The Daily Telegraph late last week that the government of Finland is already preparing for the euro’s break-up.
RIT, which Lord Rothschild hasled since 1988, had a -7pc net short position in terms of principal currency exposures on the euro at the end of July, up from -3pc at the end of January. Given a net asset value of £1.836bn at the end of July, the position is worth £128m.
Sources close to RIT suggested that the position was not a dogmatic negative view.
It is not the first time Lord Rothschild has used currency positions as a form of hedge. RIT significantlyincreased its exposure in sterling after the currency’s decline in 2008, but then scaled back on both the sterling and the euro, anticipating the ensuing recessions in both regions.
Some 53pc of RIT’s assets were in US dollars at the end of July, in part a reflection of its deal to buy a 37pc stake in Rockefeller Financial Services at the end of May.
Lord Rothschild is not alone in seeing value in shorting – or selling down – the euro. At a conference organised by business news channel CNBC in July, Mary Callahan Erdoes, head of JP Morgan Asset Management, said “shorting the euro” when asked for her single best investment idea.
In June, George Soros – the billionaire investor best known in the UK for helping to force sterling out ofthe European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 by betting against the British currency – said that European leaders at that point had a “three-month window” to save the euro.
Last edited by gobbledock; 22nd Aug 2012 at 11:51.