Benjamin James Goldsmith (born 28 October 1980,[1] in London) is an English financier and environmentalist.
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Goldsmith is a founding partner of WHEB Ventures Limited a venture capital fund that invests in clean technologies, and of its sister company Ruston WHEB. He got an early start in business in his late teens when, after spending six months working at private client brokers, Hargreave-Hale, he and school friend Michael Radomir, sought out clean technology businesses for his uncle Edward Goldsmith and others to invest in. He focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency technologies, alternatives to chemicals, and clean industrial processes.
Goldsmith's investment portfolio is manifold and includes a lucrative sports betting company, Fitzdares. He sometimes works with his brothers Zac Goldsmith and Robin Birley. They also backed the unsuccessful magazine 'The Sportsman'.[2] In August 2006, the Goldsmith brothers made a bid for the Clermont Club, the casino above Annabel's, the nightclub named for their mother, but they were thwarted by Malaysian billionaire Quek Leng Chan.[3] Goldsmith is a shareholder of Luxury Publishing Ltd, the publisher of Annabel's Diamond and Fashion the nightclub's house magazine.[4]
In 2004, he gave £20,000.00 to the UK Green Party.[5] In recent years he has contributed generously to the UK Conservative Party as well as individual candidates like Tory MP Michael Gove and the so-called "Notting Hill set of Conservative modernisers".[6]
Goldsmith attended Eton College.
Once considered to be anti-bloodsports, he has since spoken out against the ban on fox hunting in the UK, stating that the "ban on fox hunting has nothing to do with animal welfare. If it was, then antis would be campaigning as heavily against factory farming...It's another step in the dismantling of tradition."[7]
Goldsmith is the youngest child of the late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith and his 3rd wife Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart. He has an older sister, Jemima, and an older brother, Zac Goldsmith. His father famously conducted concurrent liaisons with his second wife, Ben's mother and his mistresses,[8] including Ben's first cousin Lady Cosima Somerset, legally the younger daughter of Annabel's brother, the 9th Marquess of Londonderry.[9] In 1981, his father left Ben's family in England and went to live in New York[8] with his mistress.[10]
Goldsmith has several half-siblings: Isabel Goldsmith from his father's first marriage, Alix and Manes from his father's second marriage and by his father's mistress Laure Boulay de La Meurthe,[11] he has two younger half-siblings, Jethro and Charlotte.[12] From his mother's first marriage to nightclub magnate Mark Birley he has two brothers Rupert (now deceased) and Robin Birley and a sister India Jane Birley.
Goldsmith was raised in Surrey at Ormeley Lodge and in France.[13] When his father died of pancreatic cancer in 1997, he inherited an estimated £300 million fortune.
On September 20, 2003, at St. Mary's Church in Bury St. Edmunds, he married heiress Kate Emma Rothschild (b. 1982), daughter of the late Amschel Rothschild and his wife Anita Guinness of the Guinness Brewery family. Their wedding was attended by 600 guests, thickly layered with blue-blooded and Old Etonian friends, among them Lord Frederick Windsor and Alexander Spencer-Churchill.[14] The couple have three children: Iris Annabel (b. 2004), Frank James Amschel (b. 2005) and Isaac Benjamin Victor (b. 2008).