I have learned a thousand lessons at University, but one resonated strongly on my mind all through my life: Alirio Rodrigues – one of my teachers - when I wascomplaining about how hard it was to complete his test on the required time, sentenced: “…an engineer never gets hanged…”.

I was just graduated as a Chemical Engineer, but I had my mind clear: I didn’t want to practice Engineering all my life!

JoaquimReis - another of the incredibly good teachers I had and Board Member at SONAE- addressed me a very convenient invitation to work there and that was the wayI started my professional career: as an Investment Analyst SONAE.

That was the right opportunity I was looking for to move into Management just as I wished. But I soon realized I was fairly unprepared to the task, as any intern often is.

Belmiro de Azevedo - the CEO of SONAE used to involve himself on every detail of the Retailing Business at that time – used to ask me frequently to calculate ROI and IRR of every investment he intended to do on any particular store. I was completely unable to calculate the figures he wanted as fast as he wanted – immediately, was fine enough to him! My calculator, a Texas Instruments TI58, was not enough programable, and the phone rang back way before I had time to calculate all the simulations Belmiro wanted me to do. And with his metallic voice I heard more than once from him: “You are not fast enough. Find a solution”! I was really worried: I didn’t know how to do it faster.

That’s when I remembered lesson #1: an engineer never gets hanged!

I went to one of the SONAE stores, I bought a Spectrum Sinclair, a thermal printer and Itook an old TV from home. Then I programed a simple algorithm on BASIC language to calculate IRR and ROI. After some testing and fine tuning I becamecompletely able to answer to Belmiro’s requests, with no delay at all. When he phonedme :” how much can we invest on this shop?” , my answer was immediate: no morethan X euros. On the other side of the phone a significant silence took form. Anew question: “And if the margins are one point higher?” Then you can invest nomore than Y euros! New silence.

I was thrilled because I could now answer Belmiro as soon as he shoot his questions, but on the other side of the line he was wondering how I could do it so fast now. Was I inventing the answers? How reliable were they? A rare silence fromBelmiro was not a good sign.

A week later I was invited to participate on a meeting at his office with other people.to discuss new investments. I was really nervous about facing him ( it was notvery easy for no one to face Belmiro directly at his blue, prescrutive, metallic eyes). But worse than that, I knew I couldn´t answer to his questions without my Spectrum, the huge cathodic ray tube TV and the thermal printer with me.Remember, we were far way from laptops to be invented.

That’s when Lesson #1 helped me again: I decided to calculate and print different simulations for different investments, sales and costs structures by steps of10% each. That made a combination of about 40 different scenarios. The problem at that time with thermal paper was that it was almost impossible not to roll itself. So my prints looked much more like Egyptian Papiros than to regular paper. I took them all with me and I displayed as discreetly as possible on the table. When Belmiro ask his questions about IRR, the only thing I had to do was to choose the right papiro, open it and tell the respective results.

Belmiro understood very well why and how I have done it and he smiled, something even more rare on him.

The next week, arriving in the morning at my office, I had on my desk a brand new IBM PC, the first one ever bought by SONAE by Belmiro’s direct order. That was my turn to have a large smile on my face!

(This talk is one humble and personal tribute to one of the greatest entrepreneurs and managers of the 20th century, Belmiro de Azevedo. I learned so much with him during the 10 years I worked for SONAE that I still feel in a debt of gratitude for the un-official Management Degree I took on SONAE. Belmiro defended that people should learn and study all through their lives and money and time was always on the table for everyone at SONAE intending to keep on learning. People like him, Joaquim Reis, Alvaro Portela, Nuno Jordão and others transformed an engineer into a manager. It was blood, sweet and tears everyday but it worth every minute. Thank you very much you all, but specially to Belmiro de Azevedo).

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