The family has fully restored Spencer House, St. James's Park, London.
Since the late 19th century, the family has taken a low-key public profile, donating many famous estates, as well as vast quantities of art, to charity, and generally eschewing conspicuous displays of wealth. Today, Rothschild businesses are on a smaller scale than they were throughout the 19th century, although they encompass a diverse range of fields, including: real estate, financial services, mixed farming, energy, mining, winemaking and nonprofits.
In 1980, Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschildresigned from N M Rothschild & Sons and took independent control of Rothschild Investment Trust (now RIT Capital Partners, a British investment trust), which has reported assets of $3.4 billion in 2008. It is listed on London Stock Exchange. Lord Rothschild is also one of the major investors behind BullionVault, a gold trading platform.
In 2010 RIT Capital Partners stored a significant proportion of its assets in the form of physical gold. Other assets included oil and energy-related investments.
In 2012, RIT Capital Partners announced it was to buy a 37 per cent stake in a Rockefeller familywealth advisory and asset management group. Commenting on the deal, David Rockefeller, a former patriarch of the Rockefeller family, said: "The connection between our two families remains very strong."
In 1991, Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, founded J. Rothschild Assurance Group (now St. James's Place Wealth Management) with Sir Mark Weinberg. It is also listed on London Stock Exchange.
In 2001, the Rothschild mansion located at 18 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, was on sale for £85 million, at that time (2001) the most expensive residential property ever to go on sale in the world. It was built in marble, at 9,000 sq ft, with underground parking for 20 cars.
In December 2009, Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild, invested $200 million of his own money in a North Sea oil company.
In January 2010, Nathaniel Rothschild, 5th Baron Rothschild, bought a substantial share of the Glencore mining and oil company's market capitalisation. He also bought a large share of the aluminium mining company United Company RUSAL.
During the 19th century, the Rothschilds controlled the Rio Tinto mining corporation, and to this day, Rothschild and Rio Tinto maintain a close business relationship.
Château Lafite Rothschild, Bordeaux. Alongside Château Mouton Rothschild, it is perhaps the most prestigious of the many Rothschild wine estates.
The Rothschild family has been in the winemaking industry for 150 years.In 1853, Nathaniel de Rothschild purchased Château Brane-Mouton and renamed it Château Mouton Rothschild. In 1868, James Mayer de Rothschild purchased the neighbouring Château Lafite and renamed it Château Lafite Rothschild.
Today, the Rothschild family owns many wine estates: their estates in France include Château Clarke, Château de Malengin, Château Clerc-Milon, Château d'Armailhac, Château Duhart-Milon, Château Lafite Rothschild, Château de Laversine, Château des Laurets, Château L'Évangile, Château Malmaison, Château de Montvillargenne, Château Mouton Rothschild, Château de la Muette, Château Rieussec and Château Rothschild d'Armainvilliers. They also own wine estates across North America, South America, South Africa and Australia.
Especially, Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Lafite Rothschild are classified as Premier Cru Classé—i.e., First Growth, the status referring to a classification of wines from the Bordeaux region of France.
Saskia de Rothschild was named Chairwoman of Château Lafite Rothschild in 2018, succeeding her father, Éric de Rothschild. Château Mouton Rothschild was managed by Philippine de Rothschild until her death in 2014. It is now under the direction of her son Philippe Sereys de Rothschild.
The family once had one of the largest private art collections in the world, and a significant proportion of the art in the world's public museums are Rothschild donations which were sometimes, in the family tradition of discretion, donated anonymously.
Hannah Rothschild was appointed in December 2014 as chair of the board of the National Gallery of London.
The following is a list of businesses in which the Rothschild family have held a controlling or an otherwise significant interest.
In the words of The Daily Telegraph: "This multinational banking family is a byword for wealth, power – and discretion... The Rothschild name has become synonymous with money and power to a degree that perhaps no other family has ever matched."
The neo-Gothic Rothschildschloss, Waidhofen
Writing of the Rockefeller and Rothschild families, Harry Mount writes: "That is what makes these two dynasties so exceptional – not just their dizzying wealth, but the fact that they have held on to it for so long: and not just the loot, but also their family companies."[103]
The story of the Rothschild family has been featured in a number of films. The 1934 Hollywood film titled The House of Rothschild, starring George Arliss and Loretta Young, recounted the life of Mayer Amschel Rothschild and Nathan Mayer Rothschild (both played by Arliss). Excerpts from this film were incorporated into the Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew) without the permission of the copyright holder. Another Nazi film, Die Rothschilds (also called Aktien auf Waterloo), was directed by Erich Waschneck in 1940. A Broadway musical entitled The Rothschilds, covering the history of the family up to 1818, was nominated for a Tony Award in 1971. Nathaniel Mayer ("Natty") Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild appears as a minor character in the historical-mystery novel Stone's Fall, by Iain Pears. Mayer Rothschild is featured in Diana Gabaldon's novel Voyager as a coin seller summoned to Le Havre by Jamie Fraser to appraise coins, prior to the establishment of the Rothschild dynasty, when Mayer is in his early 20s. The Rothschild name is mentioned by Aldous Huxley in his novel Brave New World, among many names of historically affluent persons, scientific innovators and others. The character, named Morgana Rothschild, played a relatively minor role in the story. The name Rothschild used as a synonym for extreme wealth inspired the song "If I Were a Rich Man", which is based on a song from the Tevye the Dairyman stories, written in the Yiddish as Ven ikh bin Rotshild, meaning 'If I were a Rothschild'
In France, the word "Rothschild" was throughout the 19th and 20th centuries a synonym for seemingly endless wealth, neo-Gothic styles, and epicurean glamour. The family also has lent its name to "le goût Rothschild," a suffocatingly glamorous style of interior decoration whose elements include neo-Renaissance palaces, extravagant use of velvet and gilding, vast collections of armour and sculpture, a sense of Victorian horror vacui, and the highest masterworks of art. Le goût Rothschild has influenced designers such as Robert Denning, Yves Saint Laurent, Vincent Fourcade and others.
"Yes, my dear fellow, it all amounts to this: in order to do something first you must be something. We think Dante great, and he had a civilization of centuries behind him; the House of Rothschild is rich and it has required much more than one generation to attain such wealth. Such things all lie much deeper than one thinks."
See also: List of conspiracy theories § Antisemitic conspiracy theories, and Antisemitic trope § Controlling the global financial system
Over more than two centuries, the Rothschild family has frequently been the subject of conspiracy theories. These theories take differing forms, such as claiming that the family controls the world's wealth and financial institutions or encouraged or discouraged wars between governments. Discussing this and similar views, the historian Niall Ferguson wrote that,
Without wars, nineteenth-century states would have little need to issue bonds. As we have seen, however, wars tended to hit the price of existing bonds by increasing the risk that a debtor state would fail to meet its interest payments in the event of defeat and losses of territory. By the middle of the 19th century, the Rothschilds had evolved from traders into fund managers, carefully tending to their own vast portfolio of government bonds. Now having made their money, they stood to lose more than they gained from conflict. [...] The Rothschilds had decided the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars by putting their financial weight behind Britain. Now they would [...] sit on the sidelines.
Many conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family arise from anti-Semitic prejudice and various antisemitic tropes.