The World's Moneylender

From the patio of his five-bedroom, colonial-style house east of Urbana, Ohio, Farmer-Lawyer Vance Brand can look 2P: miles over pasture and corn land to a white silo that marks the boundary of his 1,700-acre farm. But for the last few years he has had little time to enjoy the view, has been intent on a much broader horizon. As a director of the Export-Import Bank since 1954, Vance Brand, 52, has traveled more than a quarter of a million miles at the job of overseeing longterm, low-interest loans for the world's underdeveloped nations. So well has he handled the job that President Eisenhower last week nominated him for a post that will keep him away from Ohio even more: managing director of the two-year-old Development Loan Fund, to succeed Dempster Mclntosh, who resigned July 1 to become Ambassador to Colombia.

The farm boy who has made good in world finance is a practical, urbane and polished negotiator who knows many of the world's capitals as well as he knows Urbana (pop. 11,000) and Washington, where his father was a Congressman for eight years. As a boy he worked at odd jobs on Capitol Hill, later got degrees in both arts and law from George Washington University, married the daughter of North Carolina's Democratic Representative Homer Lyon.

In 1953 Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana persuaded him to become secretary of an advisory committee to strengthen U.S. loan agencies. Brand helped draft the law that expanded the Export-Import Bank's role and lending authority, made it autonomous under a board of directors. He moved into the Eximbank as a director. In 1956 Brand performed his biggest coup by persuading a group of Government agencies and eleven private banks to grant an unprecedented $329 million loan to help stabilize the Argentine economy after Peron's fall.

Brand believes that loans from the U.S. Government should supplement rather than replace U.S. private industry abroad. Says he: "I want to see American industry do the job. Instead of promoting state enterprises, let's foster the private side." As head of the Development Loan Fund, he intends to stress private enterprise more than the fund has done, give more loans to foreign businesses instead of governments. He also hopes to get more money from Congress. Right now the fund has $53 million to give out in loans, but the loan applications total $1.4 billion.

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