As a businessman, financier, diplomat, minister, and the first Managing Director of the IMF (International Monetary Fund), Camille Gutt (1884-1971) was involved in all the important financial negotiations that took place between the 1920s and the 1950s. Key to this, of course, is the role which he played during the Second World War, when foreign policy and financial interest were often at odds. Using Gutt's personal archives as his starting point, Crombois examines the rise and fall of financial diplomacy as a largely private enterprise, with Gutt's life as a case-study. He examines how financial diplomacy and official diplomacy differed, and confronts the confusion between private and public interests, the high level of informality in the financial sector, and the growth of postwar self-identification with national interests.