Robert Roosa was another in a long line of Brown Brothers Harriman Partners with a distinguished record of public service. In January 1965, when Roosa chose BBH from among the many suitors among leading commercial banks, he was a widely respected economist and international banker with a sparkling 20-year résumé in government service.

Roosa first came to prominence at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he rose to become vice president of the research department and later joined the Fed’s open market desk. In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy appointed him Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs. At the Treasury, Roosa crafted policies designed to preserve the status of the U.S. dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency, including an international consortium of Western central banks that committed to buy or sell gold on the London market in order to preserve the fixed price of gold.

At BBH, Roosa was still very much in demand for his views on international monetary policy, which resulted in a steady stream of visitors to see him at BBH’s New York office. Roosa’s partners generally acquiesced in these outside commitments, recognizing them as the price to be paid for someone of his stature.

And Roosa’s contributions to BBH were significant. With Eugene Rainis, he developed a new business in active management of fixed income securities. He built a foreign exchange advisory business that helped repurpose the bank’s relationships with U.S. multinationals and opened the door to a thriving corporate finance business. And he used his contacts with foreign central banks, Treasury officials, and world leaders to extend BBH’s international correspondent banking business around the world, especially in Asia and the Middle East.

Roosa was especially instrumental in building the firm’s business in Japan, where bankers recalled his help in admitting the country into the Group of Six (later the Group of Seven), the coalition of leading industrialized nations. It was in recognition of these contributions that Roosa, in 1984, was awarded the First Class Order of the Sacred Treasure, Japan’s highest honor.

For Further Reading

• Robert V. Roosa, Monetary Reform for the World Economy. New York: Harper and Row for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1965.
  
• Arthur Schelsinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1965.
  
• Eleanora W. Schoenebaum, ed. Profiles of an era, the Nixon/Ford Years. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.