Back on Nov. 21 while I was vacationing abroad, I received an e-mail from my friend and former Bay Street colleague, Doug Porter (chief economist at the Bank of Montreal), about the sudden passing of Bob Brooks. I became totally discombobulated, and since then there has not been a day that Bob has not popped into my head. Before I go on, it must be said that through the 1980s and 90s, Bob Brooks was a senior executive at the Bank of Nova Scotia and a Bay Street titan. There is not a person in the financial market scene who did not know who Bob was, and he commanded respect from all circles. At a personal level, he made a major impact on my career path at a young age.
I met Bob in October, 1987, when I began to work as the financial economist at Scotiabank. I split the morning meetings with my boss at the time, Aron Gampel, and we would traipse across the cavernous trading floor talking to the markets people in foreign exchange, money market, fixed-income, precious metals and equities. That usually started at 7.30 a.m., and then there was the 8:15 meeting. And it was called “the 8:15 meeting” – when all the department heads would meet in a conference room. Bob Brooks always chaired it and whenever he entered the room, usually the last one in, the banter stopped and matters of business began. The department heads succinctly went through the overnight action in their markets and what was likely to transpire that day. And the economist, either Aron or I, would speak last and provide our macro view and interpretation of the data.
I frankly didn’t know my ass from my elbow, having just come from being a housing economist at the Canada Mortgage And Housing Corp. in Ottawa for the prior three years. I knew nothing about the financial markets. Housing start data, maybe. The market for overnight swaps, not so much. And it took me many months to find my legs. Probably even longer. But the one thing I learned very quickly was that if you weren’t going to be prepared for the 8:15 meeting, you shouldn’t bother going at all. Bob always knew the right questions to ask. And it didn’t take me long to realize that he knew more about the economy and monetary policy in his thumb than I knew in my brain. He was always a step ahead of everyone in the room and I used to stay up late at night trying to think of what he was going to ask me the next morning. You can tell how smart someone is not just by their answers but also by their questions. And to this day, after being on Bay Street and Wall Street for four decades, nobody asked tougher or indeed better questions than Bob Brooks. Always with his game face on. He was tough, but always gracious and respectful.
I went to New York in the fall of 2002 to head up the economics department for Merrill Lynch, and for the next seven years in that role I met some of the smartest and most tenacious chief information officers and business executives in the world. Carl Icahn. Paul Tudor Jones. Bill Gross. Boone Pickens. John Paulson. Many more. And after several years of doing meetings and conferences in front of all the Wall Street titans, none of them could stand up to Bob Brooks in terms of toughness and smarts. That is 100 per cent the truth. But what is most important was that I always came to those gatherings super prepared.
And that is because of what I learnt from Bob. He challenged me in a way that few have in my career, and we didn’t even work that closely together. But he had a major impact on my career. There is not anyone I know personally and professionally who is not aware of Bob Brooks, and that is because I have told them what a profound influence Bob had on me. He taught me how to anticipate, how to be quick on my feet and how to leave no stone unturned. In essence, one of the most important lessons on how to be successful: always be prepared. I learnt that from Bob when I was in my late 20s and his tutelage has resonated with me to this very day.
Something else Bob taught me early on, which I preach to my own staff today: never ever bullshit your way through an answer. If you don’t know, say you don’t know but that you will find out the answer ASAP. In my early days, I remember trying to bafflegab Bob on some of his questions. That didn’t turn out so well for me but was part of the path of making me a better economist, and I owe Bob a lot for that. He was a great teacher and led by example.
Bob was a very special person. While I feared him in my younger years, because he could not tolerate people who wasted anyone’s time – and justifiably so – we grew fond of each other over time. To earn his respect was a badge of honour for anyone and based on some of the very encouraging things he said to me when I left the bank in 1994, I knew that I did earn his respect. That meant the world to me.
Then, when I got that top economics job at Merrill Lynch in 2002, Bob invited me for lunch in the Scotiabank executive dining room and feted me. It was a terrific sendoff. The things he said about me at that lunch had me thinking, “Is he talking about me?” Everyone close to me knows that story because Bob did not suffer fools and never said anything he didn’t mean.
Sometime in late 2008 or early 2009, I attended Bob’s retirement party. I was in the process of making my way back to Toronto after my seven-year stint in New York, and we struck up a conversation that seemed to go on for hours. It wasn’t even about the economy or the markets, but about family, travel and his plans for the future. We then decided that we would go for lunch once a quarter and I am pretty sure we always went to just one spot, Blowfish for sushi. Over the next decade, I had the pleasure to get to know Bob on a personal level at our lunches. I used to say to myself, “This guy’s not so scary. He’s fun!” What a sense of humour. What a great raconteur. And truly brilliant. We talked about everything from arts to science to sports to world events. There’s nothing he couldn’t form an opinion on.
Funny that we hardly ever talked about markets any more in those later years. We talked about life. And he was always willing to give me advice when asked. In my early days at Gluskin Sheff, I posed a question at one of our lunches about how to make the transition from talking to Merrill Lynch institutional clients to my new firm’s retail clients. He said this: “Tell them to never put all their eggs in one basket, and there is never any such thing as a sure thing.” If I had a nickel for every time I have used that line, I’d be retired in Monaco right now.
There is something else that I am certain few people are aware of. Over the years, I had the opportunity to have met with two Scotiabank CEOs. One was Peter Godsoe and the other was Rick Waugh. Both said the same thing to me when I brought up Bob’s name as someone who was a mentor of mine during my time at the bank – that they wouldn’t have lasted if it weren’t for Bob’s wisdom and sage advice. To repeat: They both said the exact same thing! And in the Game of Thrones that exists at the highest ranks of the banks, this also shows another endearing quality: trust.
I am eternally thankful for having met Bob Brooks. Even more fortunate to have had the opportunity to have spent valuable time with him over the years. I miss him dearly and always will. May his memory be a blessing. My prayers are with his family.
David Rosenberg is founder of Rosenberg Research.
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