Charles Hambro, Baron Hambro

Charles Eric Alexander Hambro, Baron Hambro (24 July 1930 – 7 November 2002) was a banker and politician in the United Kingdom.

Background

Hambro was the last family chairman of the Hambros Bank, the merchant bank founded by Carl Joachim Hambro. 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 Carl Joachim 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.

Early years

Before he was two years old, Charles's mother died after catching pneumonia while out riding, and his father remarried Marcus Wallenberg Jr's exwife. 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.

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.

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 resignation. 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, created 26 September 1994 he took the title Baron Hambro, of Dixton and Dumbleton in the County of Gloucestershire^[1] 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.

Sale of Hambros Bank

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 Assurance. While the name lives on as SG Hambros Bank and Trust, that part of the business is now part of the private banking arm of the French group Société Générale, SG Private Banking.^[2]

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.

Hambro married his first wife, Rose, in 1954, and they had a daughter Clare Evelyn (married to Eivind Rabben) and two sons, Charles Edward (divorced from Nicole Nicholas) and Alexander Robert (married to Hattie Ward Jones). They were divorced in 1976, after which he married his second wife, Cherry, a divorcee with one daughter, Miranda. He had nine Grandchildren: Christiana, Tatiana, Charles, Edward, Alexander, Ben, Marina,Jemima and Sam.