Results Guy Takes Reins in Canada.

• Author: Gray, Carol Lippert
• Position: Pierre Matuszewski, Financial Executives Institute

Pierre Matuszewski, an investment banker, believes that 'if you've got an objective, don't let it go.'

Pierre Matuszewski, incoming chairman of FEI Canada, is a man at home in a number of cultures and languages. Born in London to a Parisian mother and a Polish father, he's a Canadian citizen fluent in French and English, with a soupcon of Spanish. As interested in the arts as he is in business, and as comfortable cross-country skiing in the woods near his home as bicycling through Austria or cooking boeuf Bourguignon for friends, Matuszewski has been managing director and head of M&A for Canada at Societe Generale since 1997. Based in Montreal, his principal responsibilities include identifying cross-border transaction opportunities and participating in their execution, particularly in the hot high-technology sector. He also works closely with his colleagues at S.G. Cowen in the United States.

Matuszewski enjoys what he does, he says, for three main reasons: "I like to see results reasonably quickly, and every transaction has a certain duration. Investment banking doesn't require the short-term attention span of a day-trader, nor the patience of an analyst; an investment banker's attention span is in between. I also like to be of service to my clients, individuals and corporations. Finally, I like to believe I play a useful role, however small, in bringing companies together, in raising capital for them."

One of the most important business lessons he says he's learned "is the value of being tenacious. Like a dog with a bone, if you've got an objective, don't let it go. Persistence does pay off -- unless you're proven to be wrong. Then don't be pig-headed."

Perhaps that emphasis on tenacity is part of the reason he ranks "Twelve Angry Men" among his favorite movies. When he was in business school, a professor showed the film as a lesson in leadership. "It's the story of a jury assembled to render a verdict on the guilt or innocence of a boy," he explains. "Henry Fonda's character had to convince 11 other jurors that justice was not being done. It illustrates the value and constraints of teamwork. There are more ideas in several heads than in one, and being on a team forces you to articulate your own ideas as well as to listen -- and compromise is not always the best outcome."

Matuszewski's list of favorite movies also includes Italian comedy "Swept Away," citing "its ability to put two people from opposite ends of the social spectrum into...