Martin Evans: Nat Rothschild seeks 'very substantial' damages! y

Nat Rothschild, one of Britain's wealthiest men, has launched a High Court action after he was accused of being the "puppet-master" behind a controversial deal involving Lord Mandelson and the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Billionaire financier Mr Rothschild, 40, who is now based in Switzerland, is demanding "very substantial" damages after a story appeared in the Daily Mail in May 2010, accusing him of arranging a meeting at which a $500 million aluminium deal was struck. According to the article, Mr Rothschild, who was educated at Eton and Oxford and is heir to to the Rothschild banking dynasty, deliberately used Lord Mandelson in order to impress Mr Deripaska. Mr Rothschild's counsel, Hugh Tomlinson QC, said the story was extremely damaging to his client's reputation as a leading figure in the business world. He told the judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, who was hearing the case at London's High Court without a jury, that while Lord Mandelson had been the main focus of the article, it portrayed Mr Rothschild in a very negative light. The suggestion was, he explained, that his client had acted as a kind of "puppet-master" who deliberately engineered a meeting at a Moscow restaurant in order to help the deal to go through.