Eugene H. Rotberg

Obituary of Eugene H. Rotberg
Eugene H. (Gene) Rotberg, former vice president and treasurer of the World Bank, executive vice president of Merrill Lynch and a chief counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who was as delighted to build Picasso-themed sandcastles for his grandchildren as he was inventing currency swaps that raised billions for fighting global poverty, died Monday.
He was 95, just three years removed from penning his first opera libretto at age 92, for which he received a congratulatory note from Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Dubbed "the world's smartest banker" by Institutional Investor magazine, and "world's greatest opera fanatic" by his daughters, (a title he shared with lifelong opera seatmate Iris), Rotberg was so eager to share the world's art and architecture with his family on walks from Paris to Kyoto that he would be gesticulating wildly two blocks ahead before they had finished a block.
While winning international acclaim for World Bank innovations trading and loaning tens of billions of dollars in currencies, Rotberg took more pride in mentoring the financial and legal wizards on his staff into a kind and supportive think tank.
Though Rotberg delighted in articles spotlighting his financial genius, he was an even more avid curator of the accomplishments of his daughters, his grandchildren and a broad and deep circle of friends who relied on him for wise counsel. Among his favorite phrases, shared equally with bankers and relatives, were: "Admit what we don't know. Show some humility."
Rotberg was tapped by World Bank President and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1968, only 38 years old, despite protesting that he barely knew a bond from a stock. Rotberg, a Penn law graduate who spent most of his time reading Greek classics and collecting Japanese art prints, warned that his main experience with bankers was "putting them in jail at the SEC for violating the Sherman Act."
But he also told friends that fighting global poverty "was worth spending one's life on." So he did, for the next 18 years, growing the World Bank's borrowings on behalf of poverty-fighting projects and earning the title "the man who raised $100 billion."
Throughout his globe-trotting career, Rotberg believed respect for international history and culture should start at home. He designed a contemplative Japanese garden inside the sun room of their suburban Maryland home, and reveled in the elaborately planned backyard weddings of daughters Diana and Pamela next to his Japanese spider maples.
When his family bought an odd-shaped parcel of land and built a new home in Maryland, Gene designed a glass-covered, double-winged art showcase centered on a 30 foot observation tower with views of the Potomac River. In his final years, his dedicated rotation of grandchildren held Papa's hands and reminded him how he had led them through the sights and ideas of Venice, London, Montreal, Tokyo, Nice, Reykjavik, Oslo, Zermatt or Athens.
Eugene Harvey Rotberg was born Jan. 19, 1930, in Philadelphia, and grew up playing stickball and watching his attorney father, Irving, make corner speeches for the local Democratic machine and prosecute civil rights violations. A brief teenage modeling career for a local men's clothing store reinforced his oft-stated ideal of "looking sharp."
Rotberg began studies of Greek and Latin classics at Philadelphia's legendary Central High School, then dove into literature and philosophy at Temple University. He graduated from University of Pennsylvania's law school before taking a brief draft detour as a U.S. Army typist during the Korean War. Rifle training left him with selectively bad hearing: He absorbed opera notes just fine, but blocked out Republican tax proposals and the whining of white collar fraud defendants.
Rotberg met his eventual lifetime travel and opera co-pilot, Iris Comens, on a blind date, and their 70-year marriage brought two daughters, Diana and Pam, eight grandchildren claiming reciprocal doting privileges, and their first great grandchild in 2023.
After leaving the Army, Rotberg spent 11 years at the Securities and Exchange Commission, exposing how stock exchanges operated as anti-consumer trusts and created risks that threatened market catastrophes for "the little guy." After nearly 200 years of fixed consumer commissions on stock trades, "it was Rotberg more than anyone else who set in motion the forces that would culminate in the complete unfixing of commissions" in 1975, Institutional Investor said.
McNamara brought Rotberg into the World Bank to overhaul its sleepy finances and find more rich-nation money to loan to developing nations. Rotberg is credited with inventing the currency swap to allow borrowers and lenders more liquidity, in 1981, in an instrument the World Bank traded with Salomon Brothers and IBM. In his 19 years helming World Bank finances, the development bank's borrowing increased from $500 million a year to $10 billion a year.
Throughout his tireless money-raising for developing nations, Rotberg intentionally cultivated an empowered and diverse staff, celebrating collegiality and everyone who surpassed his expertise. He traveled the world to exhort bankers to spend less thought enriching themselves and more on uplifting others with education and meaningful work, turning often to bookmarked quotes from Shakespeare, Socrates and Robert Burns.
In return, employees at retirement ceremonies quoted Yeats in describing Rotberg, "To be one of the men in whom many believe, in whose eyes many look for order, at whose voice many paths are opened, many countries are populated, many cities arise." His closest colleagues spoke of his departure as losing a parent.
Euromoney called Rotberg "The World Bank's Philosopher-King." Forbes Magazine said, "In financial markets around the world, Rotberg is held in awe." Institutional Investor named him one of the 40 most influential individuals in finance of the past 40 years.
While captaining the next generation of public finance leaders, Rotberg also made time to serve on the boards of the Washington National Opera, NPR Foundation, the Theatre Lab, the Institute for International Medicine, Martek Biosciences Corp., and more. He also complicated the day jobs of countless college professors as a provocative guest lecturer from the Wharton School to Duke, Columbia and Harvard Business School.
At home, while raking gravel just so in the Japanese garden, Rotberg also kept a keen eye on internet prices for ukiyo-e era woodblock prints. He crowded the walls of the family's suburban Maryland home with the works of Hiroshige, Hokusai and Hasui. They hung next to brass rubbings made with his daughters at Westminster Abbey, accomplished acrylic paintings by his university-trained grandchildren, and his own landscapes of his favorite layover spot, Iceland.
"What's new in the world?" was his customary greeting, and he did not ask it idly. In his final years, his perch on the couch was surrounded by scraps of paper listing the works of art his children and grandchildren should not in good conscience overlook: foreign films, paintings, operas, ancient temples and cathedrals.
While intensely competitive with his beloved Iris, who accompanied him on their first date to a performance of Verdi's "Otello" in Philadelphia, no one championed her remarkable accomplishments in the field of education more than he did. He would approve that Iris's obituary was 1,428 words long, and this one will end at 1,427.
Throughout the decades, Rotberg set aside resources to fund the college educations of eight grandchildren, while advising dozens of family and friends on investments and risk. He taught them there was only one trade he considered perfect: exchanging one's assets for one's fulfillment.
From a beach chair planted in the sands of Maui on family trips, Rotberg could never resist another political conversation, another finance explanation, or another game: Phillies baseball, Commanders football, brutally competitive Scrabble with Iris, the family-invented "The Game," Wordle. When his sons-in-law and grandchildren created trivia quizzes for holidays they predicted how many questions would pass before Gene announced he had a better question. The over-under was three.
Gene was preceded in death by Iris, on Jan. 1 of this year, and his brother, Jay Rotberg. He is survived by his daughters, Diana Bray (Leigh) and Pamela, (Michael); grandchildren Maya, Sam, Eva, Madeline,Tess, Emma, Quinn and Hayden; and great-grandchild Harvey.
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A Graveside Service will be held on Friday, October 10, at 9:45 am, at Emanuel Cemetery, Denver, Colorado. A Livestream will be available on Feldman Mortuary's YouTube channel.