SHEDDING his reputation as a carefree playboy took Nat Rothschild a decade of dealmaking. Gaining one for peppery imprudence took only a few hours.In a spectacular public spat, Mr Rothschild (part of a family which owns a stake in this newspaper) swapped insults on Twitter, a microblogging service, with his former business partner, Aga Bakrie, marking the end of a troubled investment in Indonesian commodities.In 2010 Mr Rothschild brought a coal-mining company, then called Bumi, to a London stock-exchange listing in what at the time seemed a notable coup, marrying the industrial muscle of an Indonesian family conglomerate with the financial expertise embodied in his surname. But the venture soon turned sour, amid falling coal prices and fierce rows over corporate governance. On March 25th the divorce was finalised and the Bakrie group bought back its stake in Bumi, severing ties with Asia Resource Minerals, part-owned by Mr Rothschild.The bitterness of the dispute (which involved lurid allegations of corporate espionage, fraud and bad faith) soon bubbled over. Mr Rothschild tweeted a sardonic thanks to Mr...
from The Economist: Finance and economics http://ift.tt/1hektdK
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