Making a career in Brazilian equities in the City of London might seem a job for an inward-looking intellectual who likes reading and doesn't mind waiting for the telephone to ring. But Stephen Rose, a quintessential Englishman, is quite the opposite - he is outgoing, gregarious and more likely to be ringing you. These qualities enabled him to build his brokerage, Stephen Rose & Partners, to the point where it attracted interest from Brazil's third-largest private bank, Unibanco, which bought the business two years ago.
It was the crowning achievement of a 20-year interest in Brazil that began by accident when he discovered that his former employer, US brokerage White Weld, had an investment in a Brazilian bank (one of the institutions that eventually went on to make up Unibanco). Rose was mainly concerned with selling US equities to UK institutions at the time and Brazil was something new and exciting. "I asked my bosses if I could sell Brazilian equities and they said we don't mind what you do after six o'clock," recalls Rose.
In 1978 White Weld's brokerage operation was sold to Merrill Lynch where Rose worked for just nine days before moving to PaineWebber and then finally starting his own business in 1980.