Francisco Pujol is the youngest kid on the block among Euromoney's dealmakers and something of an outsider. Aged 29 and from Puerto Rico, he studied in the US but not in one of the Ivy League schools. Nor has he yet bolstered his qualifications with an MBA.
Pujol's CV barely covers a sheet of paper and "relevant work experience" is summarized in three paragraphs. Under education, he writes, "BS in business economics and public policy, Indiana University, 1991".
But after only seven years in the business, Pujol is already head of debt origination of sovereigns, agencies and frequent corporate issuers in Morgan Stanley's Latin American debt capital markets group. What's more, in the space of a year, he has pulled Morgan rapidly up the sovereign league table.
Pujol puts his success down to "luck, hard work and team effort" but the secret seems to be a rigorous approach to origination followed by the speediest of executions. Take, for example, a $1 billion 10-year global done for Mexico in March. An opportunity was noticed in the market at a time when 10 or so sovereigns had deals in the pipeline and conditions were likely to deteriorate.