The rise of S.G. Warburg & Co was the most striking feature of the postwar City. Founded by Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1940s, the bank was an awkward upstart in the closed shop of London merchant banking. Through a combination of hard work, professionalism and sheer boldness, it became one of the biggest of the merchant banks, and certainly the most dynamic. It was for a time the only British merchant bank that was close to achieving a global position to rival the larger New York investment banks. Siegmund Warburg himself died in 1982, but his creation continued to flourish after his death. In 1946, it had had a capital of £1.4 million. In 1995, when it was taken over by the Swiss Bank Corporation (now part of UBS), it was valued at £860 million; and two years later, its sister company, Mercury Asset Management, was sold to Merrill Lynch for a further £2.3 billion. Any patient investor who had recognised the abilities of Siegmund Warburg early on would have been handsomely rewarded.

LRB 4 November 2010 | PDF Download