From the Back Cover --

Financial frontiersman? In the early 1950s, many called financial markets, in particular stock markets, a form of Wild West. And the farther away from home, the wilder they could be. This book provides a front row account of the unimaginable makeover of our financial system since the Second World War. As a young inexperienced investment banker in Canada, David Gill’s bosses considered his ideas and schemes “wild”
… and the same when he had an opportunity to put the lessons of those early years into practice in Washington, DC as an international bureaucrat. It turned out that the conventional ideas missed the point of the massive changes that were underway in which the “frontier” went from irrelevant periphery to critical mainstream. In the words of Dean Acheson, David felt lucky to be “present at the creation” and have the opportunity to see the experiments and initiatives he undertook at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) come to fruition. This is about the re-engineering of the financial world; about the people involved; about the struggle against the many supporters of the status quo in many countries and markets; and about David’s perspective and role in all of this.

About the Author--

A child of two cultures, David Gill was born in Hamilton, Ontario, on 6 July 1926. By age 14, David had logged 14 Atlantic crossings between Canada and England, either on holiday or related to one of his father’s many business ventures … if something didn’t work in England, he would try something new in Canada, and so on, back and forth. Following from these early adventures, David was able to adapt and thrive in new circumstances and different cultures. After working as an investment banker from the early 1950s to 1971, David accepted the challenge put forth by Robert McNamara, President of both the World Bank and the Bank’s private sector sister institution, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). McNamara, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and ex-President of Ford Motor Company, wanted David to head a new unit in IFC that would be responsible for both the Bank’s and IFC’s activities promoting the establishment of domestic capital markets in developing countries. That new unit would become the Capital Markets Department (CMD). And the rest, as they say, is history. David is still a director of a company concerned with investing in Africa, and he remains active with consulting, travel, and grandchildren. David and Lena Gill live on the Eastern Shore of Chesapeake Bay near Easton, Maryland.

David Gill