IDB Bank history

The Bank was formally created in 1959, when the Organization of American States drafted the Articles of Agreement establishing the Inter-American Development Bank.

The Fund for Special Operations (FSO), which was established in 1960, extends loans at low interest rates with forty-year maturities and ten-year grace periods.

In 1962, IDB Ltd. became one of the first foreign banks to open a branch in New York when the New York State banking law was changed to allow foreign banks to operate branches here.

In 1967, Israel Discount Bank Ltd. acquired the Hias Immigrant Bank and changed the name to IDB Trust Company, an FDIC-insured institution.

Ultimately, in 1980, the branch's assets were transferred to the renamed, wholly-owned IDB Ltd. subsidiary, Israel Discount Bank of New York ("IDBNY"). IDBNY also took over a major portion of the western hemisphere banking operations of its Tel-Aviv parent.

The IDB established an Intermediary Financial Facility (IFF) in 1983 to reduce interest rates on loans from its Ordinary Capital account to a number of low-income countries including the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Paraguay, and Suriname.

The IIC, which began operations in 1989, provides long-term loans to help modernize small- and medium-size enterprises.

The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), which was established in 1992, also provides loans, grants, and technical assistance to micro and small enterprises in the region.

The bank's Private Sector Department, established in 1994, is largely responsible for the coordination and oversight of private sector activities.

Subsequently, the Bank took on more contemporary nomenclature with the registered service mark "IDB Bank." In March 2000, IDB Bank became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Discount Bancorp, Inc., a Delaware holding company it formed to hold its shares.

Beginning in 2001, Duque worked in Washington, D.C., for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), first as an adviser on Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador and then as chief of the organization’s Culture, Creativity, and Solidarity Division.

Arguably, the most important development for Duque during this period, however, was the beginning of his relationship with Uribe, who was then serving as Colombia’s president (2002–10) and who would become Duque’s mentor.

Member countries are required to pay only a small fraction (4.3 percent in 2007) of the subscription.

For different reasons (analyzed in Díaz-Bonilla and del Campo, 2010) many of these ambitious ideas did not materialize, but the Congress resulted in the creation of an organization called the Commercial Office of the Americas, from which the Organization of American States eventually emerged.

Uribe was prohibited by the constitution from serving again as president, but in 2014 he formed the CD party and was elected to the Senate, as was Duque, who had joined the “Urbista” party.

Although the agreement was rejected by Colombian voters in a referendum in October 2016, a revised version of it was pushed through the House of Representatives and the Senate (both of which were dominated by Santos’s ruling coalition) in November.

By early 2017 the terms of the agreement were being implemented as FARC guerrillas began turning over their weapons to United Nations monitors, and on August 15, 2017, the Colombian government declared an official end to the conflict.

That criticism was central to Duque’s candidacy after Uribe had anointed him as the CD’s standard-bearer for the 2018 presidential election.

In November 2019 Colombians took to the streets en masse to demand action on a raft of issues, ranging from education and health care reform to protection for activist leaders.

The government appeared willing to address these issues, but the outbreak of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic of 2020 brought the government’s efforts to a halt, along with the Colombian economy.

At the end of April 2021, even as the virus raged, and in violation of pandemic lockdown orders, Colombians, angered by Duque’s plan for tax reform that would squeeze the middle and working classes, once again took to the streets in protest.