Charles Hambro, Baron Hambro
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Charles Eric Alexander Hambro, Baron Hambro (1930 – 7 November 2002) was a banker and politician in the United Kingdom.
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[edit] Background
Hambro was the last family chairman of the Hambros Bank, the merchant bank begun by his family. He also applied his financial acumen and connections in the cause of the Conservative Party, as its treasurer in the difficult years between 1993 and 1997. Charles Hambro was a great-great-grandson of Baron C. J. Hambro, who had moved from Copenhagen to found the London branch of the family bank in 1839. The Scandinavian connection was lucrative for many years, although by the time he joined the bank, in 1952, it had become a pillar of the City establishment, with a similar range of interests and influence as the great names of Rothschild and Baring.
[edit] Early years
Before he was two years old, Charles's mother died after catching pneumonia while out riding, and his father remarried Marcus Wallenbergs widow. His stepmother's family connections to the Wallenberg family enabled him to be evacuated to Sweden during the Second World War. He spent the middle war years in the United States, staying with the great Morgan banking family, before returning to England in 1943 to complete his education - and consolidate an invaluable banker's network - at Eton. This classic City training continued with two years' national service in the Coldstream Guards.
[edit] Hambros Bank
After only five years at the bank, Hambro was appointed as a managing director, and became deputy chairman in 1965, at the age of 35. Seven years later, he took over the chair, relinquishing it only in 1997 as the bank's independence began to evaporate. He was in charge through interesting but turbulent times, beginning with the stock market and property crash of 1973-74. Hambros was one of the leading banks called in by the Bank of England to launch the financial lifeboat which dealt with the collapse of the Slater Walker empire and saved the financial system from collapse.
As part of its modernisation during the 1980s, Hambros moved from its historic location in the heart of the City to modern premises near the Tower of London. It was symbolic of the changing times, but the changes were often not to the chairman's liking. "Sometimes I wonder whether we have been so clever at all", he once mused.
[edit] The Conservative Party
As one of the last old-style merchant bankers, Hambro was a natural Tory, which made him a rather uneasy bedfellow of many of those who took over the party in the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher's demise. But his role was financial, not political; as the Treasurer of the Conservative Party, he was charged with rescuing the party from the £19 m overdraft run up in John Major's desperate, but successful, bid to fend off the Labour Party in 1992, for a fourth successive Tory election win. His efforts were rewarded with a life peerage, taking the title Baron Hambro, of Dixton and Dumbleton in the County of Gloucestershire after his Gloucestershire Estate. The task meshed perfectly with Hambro's City job. From 1987, he also served for 12 years on the board of the shipping and distribution group P&O, led by his longstanding friend and business associate Lord Sterling, who had been a confidant of Mrs Thatcher.
[edit] Sale of Hambros Bank
In common with most of the other great names of British merchant banking[citation needed], Hambros was unable to deal with the onward march of its big American and continental rivals. By the mid-1990s, its most successful operations were the estate agency Hambro Countrywide and the insurance company Hambro Life - and they were sold off as part of the bank's dismemberment in 1998. While the name lives on as SG Hambros Bank and Trust, it is now part of the private banking arm of the French group Société Générale.
[edit] Family and friends
In keeping with his background and traditions, Hambro himself was a gentleman banker who maintained other interests and a relaxed outlook. He spread himself thinly, preferring to maintain a few lengthy commitments. He was a trustee of the Royal National Pension Fund for Nurses from 1968, and a trustee of the British Museum from 1984 to 1994.
All his friends knew him as "Charlie". His style was low-key and affable and, while he inevitably regretted the passing of the family bank and the old City, he continued to enjoy life, particularly on his Gloucestershire estate, which was renowned for pheasant shooting. He listed his interests as shooting, farming and forestry and believed that "a gentleman should never be seen to try hard".
Hambro married his first wife, Rose, in 1954, and they had a daughter Clare Evelyn and two sons, Charles Edward and Alexander Robert. They were divorced in 1976, after which he married his second wife, Cherry, a divorcee with one daughter, Miranda. He has 9 Grandchildren: Christiana, Tatiana, Charles, Edward, Alexander, Ben, Marina, Jemima and Sam.
