Bank fo China Takes Stake in Rothschild Bank

Bank of China, the world’s fifth largest bank, said it was opening its wallet for a stake in the Rothschild banking dynasty.

Bank of China is coughing up 236.3 million euros ($341 million) for a 20 percent stake in La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild, the family-held asset management and private banking business. One of the few remaining independent merchant banks in Europe, the French firm was founded in 1953 by Edmond de Rothschild and has been chaired by his son Benjamin de Rothschild since 1997.

While The Financial Times noted that the move was the first strategic investment by a leading Chinese bank in the eurozone, Min Zhu, the bank’s executive vice chairman, said Bank of China had no intentions of jumping into any deals for the growing list of struggling Western banks.

“We don’t have the capacity yet,” he told The Times of London.