Siegmund G. Warburg

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Sir Siegmund George Warburg (born September 30, 1902 in Seeburg ; † 1982 in London ) was a German banker of Jewish origin from the Warburg banking family in Hamburg , which is still active today with the private bank MM Warburg & CO , founded in 1798 .

Life

Siegmund Warburg was the son of Georges Gabriel Siegmund Warburg (1871-1923) and Lucie Kaulla (1866-1955, called Luz, sister of Rudolf Kaulla ) in Seeburg (now a district of Bad Urach ) near Reutlingen , in the Kingdom of Württemberg . The father ran the Uhenfels manor there as a model farm . Siegmund Warburg first attended grammar school in Reutlingen and then moved to the Tübingen monastery , where he received a humanistic education. The father died in 1923 and Lucie Warburg managed the estate. Siegmund Warburg did a banking apprenticeship with his uncle Max Warburg in Hamburg after leaving school and continued his training with Rothschild in London . 1934, a year after the " seizure of power " Hitler, Warburg left Germany for good. He went to London and founded his first banking house there, the "New trading Company", the forerunner of SG Warburg & Co. , which was renamed in 1946.

After the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, Lucie Warburg also emigrated to London, the Uhenfels estate was "Aryanized" by the Nazis and went to the community of Trailfingen for 150,000 Reichsmarks .

He made a name for himself in business with unconventional ideas. In 1963 he issued the first Eurobond issue. In the 1950s he was responsible for the hostile takeover of British Aluminum by the US company Reynolds Metals .

Siegmund G. Warburg rebelled, sometimes vehemently, against the nepotistic recruitment approach of other London companies. He preferred selection criteria such as " character , independent thinking, intelligence , sense of duty , social competence (not social background) as well as courage and common sense", but warned at the same time against " arrogance , self-adulation, carelessness, bad writing style and bureaucratism ".

Shortly before his death in 1982, Warburg, who was knighted a Knight Bachelor (“Sir”) in 1966, said in one of his few interviews: “I repeat it again: Every day I fear becoming part of the establishment . Success quickly leads to complacency and mediocrity ”.

In 1995 SG Warburg Plc. taken over by the then Swiss Bank Corporation (SBV) . He changed its name to "SBC Warburg - A Division of Swiss Bank Corporation" and integrated it into the company as the Investment Banking division. The name "Warburg" was initially used by the SBV and, after the merger with the then Swiss Bank Corporation (SBG) , by UBS as a brand name for the investment banking division. In June 2003, the name was definitely lost in favor of a uniform UBS brand identity.

literature

  • Jacques Attali: A Man of Influence. The Extraordinary Career of SG Warburg (translated by Barbara Ellis), Adler & Adler, Bethesda MD, 1987
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (management and editing): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933 . Volume 1, Saur, Munich 1980.
  • Ron Chernow : The Warburgs. A family odyssey . Berliner Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1996
  • Niall Ferguson: The banker Siegmund Warburg. His life and his time . Munich: FinanzBook 2011. ISBN 978-3-89879-626-2
    • Niall Ferguson: High Financier. The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg . London 2010.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jacques Attali: Siegmund G. Warburg. The life of a great banker. , Düsseldorf, 1986, pp. 75-76
  2. ↑ Seeburg, Castle a. Uhlenfels estate
  3. ^ The legacy of Siegmund Warburg (from www.ubs.com)
personal data
SURNAME Warburg, Siegmund G.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Warburg, Siegmund; Warburg, Sir Siegmund George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German banker
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Urach
DATE OF DEATH 1982
Place of death London