WARBURG, SIR SIEGMUND

WARBURG, SIR SIEGMUND (1902–1982), British merchant banker. Warburg was born at Tubingen, Germany, a member of the famous German banking family, although from one of its less affluent branches. Nevertheless, in 1919 he entered the family bank, M.M. Warburg & Co. of Hamburg, spending long periods in London and New York as he learned his trade during the 1920s. He was made a partner in 1930. The way ahead seemed clear when Hitler came to power in 1933. Warburg immediately left for London, where he founded a small merchant bank, the New Trading Company; he became a British subject in 1939. In 1946 his bank was renamed S.G. Warburg & Co. By a process of meticulous   research, information-sharing on a daily basis among all executives, and a painstaking personal approach to its clients, it gradually became an important force in the City of London. In 1957 it became a member of the Accepting House Committee, thus joining the City's financial elite. Warburg pioneered new (and perhaps surprising) takeover techniques, especially in the 1958 purchase of British Aluminium, and spent much of the rest of his life trying to create a genuinely global merchant bank. He was knighted in 1966 and spent most of his last years in Switzerland. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online; R. Chernow, The Warburgs (1993). (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)