Rothschild & Co is a multinational private and merchant bank, headquartered in Paris, France and London, England. It is the flagship of the Rothschild banking group controlled by the British and French branches of the Rothschild family.

A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate and/or finance production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.