N M Rothschild and Sons

N M Rothschild and Sons is a British merchant bank founded in London in 1811 by Nathan Mayer Rothschild, one of the five sons of the Frankfurt financier Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who had built a family banking network by sending his sons to establish linked banking houses in Frankfurt, Vienna, London, Naples and Paris. The London house rose to prominence during the Napoleonic Wars and rapidly became one of the most powerful financial institutions in Europe, financing British government loans, including subsidies supporting the Duke of Wellington's Peninsular War campaign, and later arranging major transactions such as the British government's 1875 purchase of a controlling share in the Suez Canal Company. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the bank financed railways, mining ventures including Cecil Rhodes' South African diamond and gold interests, and government bond issues across multiple continents, becoming synonymous with the wider Rothschild banking dynasty's influence on European finance. The London house continues today, having merged its investment banking operations into the broader Rothschild and Co group in the twenty-first century while retaining the historic N M Rothschild and Sons name for parts of its business.