Fonds - Personal Papers of William Diamond

William Diamond Speech Transcripts - June 1999 - Memoirs of the Beginnings of EDI (June 1999) and... William Diamond Chronological Files, Outgoing - 1955 - 1958 William Diamond Chronological files - IFC and South Asia - 1969-01 - 1969-03 William Diamond Chronological files - 1970-09 William Diamond Chronological files, India  - 1955-02 - 1958-12 William Diamond Chronological files, India, Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation - 1959-0... William Diamond Chronological files, India - 1959-05 - 1959-06 William Diamond Chronological files, India - 1959-03 - 1959-04 William Diamond Chronological files, India  - 1960-01 - 1960-10 William Diamond Chronological files - IFC, South Asia, and EDI - 1977-09 - 1977-12 William Diamond Chronological files - IFC, South Asia and EDI - 1978-01 - 1978-05

Identity area

Reference code

WB IBRD/IDA DIAMOND

Title

Personal Papers of William Diamond

Date(s)

  • 1955 - 2000 (Creation)

Level of description

Fonds

Extent and medium

9.40 linear feet of textual records

Context area

Name of creator

Biographical history

William Diamond was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1917. After receiving his B.A. (1937) and his Ph.D. in history (1942) from the Johns Hopkins University, Diamond worked with the U.S. Board of Economic Warfare and the U.S. Foreign Economic Administration. From 1944 to 1946, he served as an economist on US missions in Turkey and Czechoslovakia. He later served as Economic Advisor to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration mission to Czechoslovakia and subsequently at its headquarters in London.

Diamond joined the Loan Department of the World Bank in 1947 and served there in a variety of posts. In 1947-1948, he took a leave of absence to be Deputy Director of the Foreign Trade Administration of Greece, an agency of the Royal Greek Government. In 1955, he transferred from the Loan Department to the staff of the new Economic Development Institute, the Bank's staff college on economic development, now called the World Bank Institute, where he served for three years. One outcome of this period was his book Development Banks, a basic text on that subject, which was translated into several languages. In 1959, he was on leave from the Bank to serve as Advisor to the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), a development financing institution set up in 1955 with the advice and financial assistance of the World Bank.

After returning from India in 1960, Diamond was appointed Assistant Director of Operations, Western Hemisphere. In July 1962, he transferred to the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as Director of Development Bank Services and later became Director of the Development Finance Companies Department. That department was transferred from IFC to the IBRD on November 1, 1968, with Diamond remaining its director.

As part of the general reorganization of the Bank in November 1972, Diamond became director of the Country Programs Department for South Asia, responsible for the IBRD and IDA lending programs in Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. From December 1975 until August 1977, he was Special Assistant to the Vice President, Finance, with responsibility for activities in connection with the Fifth Replenishment of IDA. Thereafter, he returned to the Economic Development Institute as a Senior Fellow and retired in March 1978.

After retirement, Diamond served as a consultant for the IFC. Some of his consulting assignments were with the Societe Internatinonale Financiere pour les Investissements et le Developpement en Afrique (SIFIDA) and the Banco Portugues de Investimento SA (BPI).

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Donated to the World Bank by William Diamond.

Content and structure area

Scope and content

This fonds consists of records, accumulated by Diamond during his career, that reflect his activities in various roles primarily from 1955 to 1990. Items include correspondence, notes, drafts, reports, and other records related to his work in the Economic Development Institute (EDI), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Development Finance Companies department, the South Asia Regional Vice-Presidency (SARVP), and others. The fonds also contains records related to speeches and memoirs he authored.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

Accruals are not expected.

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Records are subject to the World Bank Policy on Access to Information. Records relating to the International Finance Corporation are closed under the IFC Policy on the Disclosure of Information.

Conditions governing reproduction

Records are subject to the Copyright Policy of the World Bank Group.

Language of material

  • English

Script of material

Language and script notes

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

Finding aids

Allied materials area

Existence and location of originals

Existence and location of copies

Related units of description

  • See the oral histories of Alex Cairncross and William Diamond.

  • See Reference Collection on World Bank History (WB IBRD/IDA REF) for a copy of a Columbia University interview with William Diamond.

  • See Records of the Office of the Historian (WB IBRD/IDA HIST). Specifically, see the Records of the World Bank History Project -- Interviews (WB IBRD/IDA HIST-01-10) for interviews of William Diamond by the Brookings Institution's World Bank history project.

Related descriptions

Notes area

Alternative identifier(s)

Access points

Subject access points

Place access points

Name access points

Genre access points

Description control area

Description identifier

Institution identifier

Rules and/or conventions used

Internal World Bank Group Archives rules based on ISAD(G).

Disclosure status

Level of detail

Dates of creation revision deletion

23 October 2020

Language(s)

Script(s)

Sources

Accession area