Famous British Bankers

Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild was a British soldier, politician, zoologist, and banker. He is best remembered for his service as the president of the largest Jewish communal organization in the UK, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, between 1925 and 1926. Walter Rothschild also made immense contributions to the field of zoology.

Guyanese-British businesswoman and activist Gina Miller is the co-founder of the management firm SCM Direct. A former Labour Party member, she campaigned for transparency with regard to Brexit. She won a case challenging the UK government's authority to invoke Article 50 without an approval from the Parliament.

British economist Mervyn King, Member of the House of Lords Lord Temporal, serves as School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics and as Chairman of the Philharmonia. He taught at the University of Birmingham, Harvard and MIT, and served the Bank of England as a non-executive director, chief economist, deputy governor and lastly as Governor.  

Part of the famous Rothschild banking family from Frankfurt, Alfred de Rothschild started his career with his family’s N.M. Rothschild Bank in London. He later had a 20-year stint as the director of the Bank of England. A passionate art collector, he later also served as a trustee of the National Gallery.

British banker John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, better known as Sir John Lubbock, had also been an MP. However, he is best known for his contribution to ethnography and archaeology. He is also credited with coining the terms Paleolithic and Neolithic, and is known for his books on animal behavior.

Edward Alan John George was a British economist and banker who served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 1993 to 2003. Credited with guiding BOE to independence, enabling it to take full control of the country’s monetary policy, he was also acclaimed for his adept handling of UK’s withdrawal from the European Communities’ exchange-rate mechanism in 1992.

Born to a well-known merchant and evangelist, Henry Thornton too followed in his father’s footsteps to become part of the evangelical Clapham Sect. A monetory theorist, he later became the first to explain the difference between nominal and real interest rates. The noted economist had also been a parliamentarian.

British banker, economist, political-campaigner Thomas Attwood is best-remembered as a leader in the electoral reform movement. He founded the Birmingham Political Union and emerged as a prominent figure of the underconsumptionist Birmingham School and during the public campaign for Great Reform Act of 1832. After the act was passed, Attwood and Joshua Scholefield became the first two Members of Parliament for Birmingham.