Eugene Black; Led Growth of World Bank

Eugene Robert Black, a Wall Street financier who guided the World Bank in the 1950s through its period of greatest expansion, has died at 93.

Black died Thursday at his Southampton home on New York’s Long Island. His son, William H. Black, said he had suffered kidney failure and probably died of a heart attack.

Black was president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, or World Bank, from 1949 to 1962. During that period the bank lent without a default more than $6 billion of its own capital plus funds from private sources. The bank was founded in 1944 chiefly to provide loans for rebuilding Europe.

Black once said the bank’s goal was to loan money that would make “the greatest possible contribution to increasing production, raising living standards and opening opportunities for further investment.”

He built the bank from 48 member nations with a capital of $8.3 billion to 80 members with a capital of $20.5 billion. Sixty members received more than 300 loans during his administration.

Born in Atlanta, Black served in the Navy in World War I, then embarked on a successful career as bond salesman in Atlanta. He moved to New York in 1933, joined the Chase Manhattan Bank and became a vice president in 1937.

Black joined the World Bank in 1947 as executive director for the United States. He became president in 1949 and resigned in 1962, five months short of the mandatory retirement age of 65.

After retiring, Black was named chairman of the Brookings Institution in Washington and served on the boards of several major banks and companies, including Equitable Life Assurance Society, Chase Manhattan Bank and the New York Times. In the 1960s he was a special financial consultant to the United Nations and to the emir of Kuwait.

Black is survived by his second wife, the former Suzette Heath; a sister, daughter, two sons, eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.