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of Lord Jacob Rothschild and heir to one of the world’s most famous and ancient banking fortunes. The New York Times once called Nathaniel “the man who may become the richest Rothschild.”
    By 2007, Day had become a close associate of Nathaniel Rothschild. The two men had a lot in common: they were roughly the same age, both British, and both high-living businessmen who thrived on global intrigue. The friendship was a sign of just how far Nick Day had risen, professionally and socially. Through Rothschild, Day gained entrée to a family that had long dominated European banking, and had figured out—hundreds of years earlier—the value of marrying business and intelligence.
    Nathaniel is in line to become a baron, and thus the fifth in a line of Lord Rothschilds. His family’s history dates back to 1744,with the birth of Mayer Amschel Rothschild in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, Germany. His roots are in England, but Rothschild maintains offices and a spectacular home in New York. He travels around the world on a private plane. Rothschild, who is known to friends as Nat, was born on July 12, 1971.
    Nat’s ancestor Mayer Rothschild founded a financial house, and then a family dynasty, sending his five sons to five different European capitals to open financial offices of their own. When he reached age twenty-one, Mayer’s son Nathan went to England: first to Manchester, and then to London, where in 1809 he opened offices at New Court in St. Swithin’s Lane that to this day serve as headquarters for the bank that bears his name. By the 1820s, Rothschild was prosperous enough to lend capital to the Bank of England, heading off a potential economic crash in London.
    From their earliest days, the Rothshilds understood the importance of combining finance and intelligence. Nathanial coordinated high-stakes financial deals with his four brothers on the continent, who were based in France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. Through couriers, clients, and confidants, they developed an elaborate intelligence network that spread across Europe. Nathan Rothschild arranged for money to be shipped to the duke of Wellington’s armies during their epic battle against Napoleon. In 1815, Rothschild knew of Wellington’s spectacular defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo an entire day before the British government itself was informed.
    In 1875, Nathan’s son Lionel raised enough capital for the British government to acquire a major interest in the Suez Canal. And in 1885, Nathan Mayer Rothschild II became Baron Rothschild. Over the next fifty years, the family grew and prospered, branching into railroads, mining, and science. Two branches of the family in France became active in the wine industry, founding Château Mouton Rothschild, which produces one of the world’s finest clarets; and Château Lafite Rothschild, which produces elite premier cru wines.
    Nat is the only son of four children. He attended Eton andWadham College, Oxford. An extremely privileged young college student, he joined the Bullingdon Club, a rowdy all-male drinking society.
    After college in 1995, he began his career in New York at Gleacher and Company, whose founder was a friend of Lord Rothschild. The same year, Nat married the socialite Annabelle Neilson, but their riotous relationship ended in divorce three years later. While in New York, Rothschild met Timothy Barakett, then just twenty-nine and a few years older than Nat. Barakett was raising money for a new hedge fund, Atticus Capital. He eventually made the young Rothschild a partner in his fund and set him loose to leverage the Rothschild family name and connections to raise money for Atticus. Nat bore down on business, and the fund achieved astonishing success until the crash of 2008, which hit Atticus, and scores of hedge funds like it, very hard.
    Still, Barakett had leaped to the top of the hedge fund universe, ranking number seven in the trade publication Alpha magazine’s survey of the best paid fund managers