Daniel Dantas prefers it when management doesn't listen to him. When he has invested in a business and makes suggestions, he likes it when they're ignored - it means the chief executive really knows what he is doing.
"When your opinions contribute to the initiative, something is wrong," he says. "If you hire Mozart to write a symphony, he's not going to take your suggestions on the notes."
Dantas's investment record is second to none so it seems not many people have been taking his advice. When Brazilian tycoon Carlos de Almeida Braga turned his brokerage into a bank, he put Dantas in charge of the new operation. At Banco Icatu, Dantas made a number of unique moves, including concentrating on equity in a traditionally debt environment, marketing to foreign investors when Brazil was largely off limits and taking stakes in shares such as Telebrás and Petrobrás before prices took off.
But Dantas prefers small operations and the asset-management activity that was only one part of Icatu's business. In 1994 he established Opportunity with a 25% cross-shareholding between the two and offices in the same Rio de Janeiro building, named after the writer Austregesilo de Athayde, and located next to the elegant colonial mansion occupied by the Brazilian writers' association.