Fearless Ferraz.

NO ONE CAN CALL PAULO FERRAZ faint of heart. The Brazilian executive traded being CEO of Banco Bozano Simosen (where banking assets were recently sold to Banco Santander Central Hispano for an estimated US$1 billion) to direct the bank's Internet startup Invest$hop.com. As Ferraz puts it, "we sold the bricks and kept the clicks."

Brazil's leading financial portal recently launched operations in Mexico and Argentina. LATIN TRADE Editor Mike Zellner interviewed Ferraz at the company's new offices in Miami Beach.

Why did you start InvestShop as a separate company and not part of Banco Bozano Simosen?

The Internet can bean additional channel for distribution of financial products or it can be the only channel. I love the people who say, The cost per transaction of servicing a client at a branch office is US$1, while you can do the same thing on the Internet for one cent!' If you could get everybody to use the Internet services, that would be great. But you can't, so your cost per transaction becomes $1.01 because you have to provide both services. We decided to start a separate company that would serve as a financial supermarket with products from many suppliers.

Where did you get your talent?

Every year [Banco Bozano] Simosen goes to Harvard Business School, among other top schools, to recruit new talent for the bank. We didn't want a banker to run the project, we wanted an entrepreneur.

Why not hire a banker?

The banker's perspective doesn't work. They don't get it. We also didn't want the Internet company to be viewed as part of the bank, we wanted to be seen as an independent financial portal.

How did Brazil's fifth largest financial group get users to view its financial portal as independent?

Invest$hop launched in March 1999 during Brazil's tax season. We didn't offer any financial products, just free e-mail advice on tax matters to registered users within 24 hours. Our goal was to be viewed as a trustworthy source of financial information that offered excellent customer service. It worked. Later we started offering financial products.

You launched shortly after the Real currency collapse. Why didn't you wait?

You can't wait for a good moment in Latin America. It doesn't exist.

Why didn't you move into Spanish-speaking Latin America sooner?

We don't believe in "Latin America." It was a useful concept for StarMedia and others a year ago, but today you have to look at each market. We are No. 1 in the most important market, which means more than having a small presence in all of the markets. Now, we can move into Mexico and Argentina because we have done it right in Brazil.

Some say the bank transaction was a distress sale ...

All I can tell you is that the offer was too good to refuse.