Interviewing Pedro Malan, Brazil's long-standing finance minister, is like having a tutorial with a university professor. You have to be intellectually rigorous, although he will forgive a lapse or two, as he puffs on his pipe. Sitting on a comfy sofa, his woolly jumper at odds with his grey flannel suit, the professor's outward appearance, and protestations - "I am not a politician" - do not tally with a year as president of the Central Bank and a six-year stint as finance minister during a time when some of Brazil's most reformist legislation passed through Congress. "I am the longest-serving finance minister in Brazil under a democratic government," he says with pride.
Pre-election ambitions
