"With inflation at times increasing 2 percent daily," he recalls, "we would collect 11,000 prices in 9 state capitals every week and feed it all into our computers, in advance of the government. It gave us great insights - like having our own private polls - on what inflation would be doing. We then bought and sold equity and debt securities accordingly." That kind of savvy, agility, and old-fashioned numbers crunching helped the modest startup evolve into Banco Pactual, which today is a full-service investment bank with a net worth of $700 million.

Jakurski has found contrarian skepticism useful for analyzing emerging-market turbulence. "The government will enact a policy and you know from experience that it won't work, so you bet against it," he notes. "It's kind of like going to a casino and discovering there's a roulette wheel out of balance; you have a way to beat the house."

Taking bold steps and meeting tough challenges is nothing new to the dynamic Jakurski. Upon arriving at HBS, one of the biggest hurdles he overcame was difficulty with the English language. "Studying cases my first year was a nightmare," he recalls. "I'd seldom get to sleep before 2 a.m." But he perse-
vered, graduated as a Baker Scholar, returned to Brazil, and worked for a number of years at Unibanco, the country's third largest bank, before founding Pactual.

Over the years, Jakurski has learned that successful investing in Brazil requires intimate knowledge of the country. The two most prominent kinds of outside investors, he observes, are "offshore portfolio managers, most of whom don't know the region well enough, and the big Fortune 500 automobile, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies that actually run businesses here. Those latter companies know the market and have done very well as a result.

"If you're going to invest in emerging markets," he continues, "you also need to understand the interplay between the local economies and those of developed countries. When capital is flowing freely throughout the world, there is tremendous growth and opportunity in emerging markets. But when the tap is turned off, you have major crashes and dislocations."

Despite his caveats about investing in Brazilian securities, Jakurski is bullish on Brazil as a place for foreign companies to set up shop. "Brazil is one of the world's biggest domestic markets," he says. "If you're a company with global ambitions and are seeking global economies of scale, you must be in Brazil."

Jakurski recently sold his shares in Banco Pactual to start up a global hedge fund called JGP. "Our focus is on global trading, with a special emphasis on Brazil," Jakurski says. "Today's telecommunications allow those of us in faraway markets to compete with Wall Street's big guys. It's amazing - 25 years after graduation, I can trade from Rio as if I were in Boston or New York."

- Dun Gifford, Jr.