Step Up

When President John J. McCloy of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development quit his job last week (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), the bank, as all good businesses should, had someone to step into his shoes. Into the $30,000-a-year (tax free*) presidency went the U.S. Executive Director Eugene Robert Black, 51, senior vice president of Manhattan's Chase National Bank.

The choice was a good one. As a director of the World Bank since 1947, Banker Black has been a strong force behind its conservative lending policies. Almost singlehanded, he put across the sale of $250 million in World Bank bonds at a time when U.S. investors were skeptical of the bank's future. With his help, the bank boosted its net for the first nine months of this fiscal year to $7,383,006 (v. $2,242,597 in the same 1948 period).

A Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Georgia, Gene Black became a World War I Navy ensign at 19. At war's end he went into investment banking in Atlanta, became manager of the local office of Chase-Harris, Forbes Corp. in 1931, two years later was made assistant vice president. When the firm was dissolved, Gene became a second vice president of Chase, this year rose to senior vice president. (He will now resign from Chase.)

* Roughly equivalent to a taxable salary of $45,000 for a married man with two dependents.

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