Mexico: The Diamond-Studded Coyote

In Mexican business talk, a “coyote” is a slick deal-maker who moves secretly, cultivates the right people in high places and knows how to come away with a good profit. But coyote is not an offensive label to big, jowly Carlos Trouyet, 59, a Mexico City banker and financier who prizes the title so highly that he wears in his lapel a small coyote made of diamonds. With a personal fortune of well over $15 million, Trouyet (pronounced true-jay) is a director of 42 companies and chairman of 19 of them—in telephones, steel, cement, plywood, textiles, hotels, beer and banking.

Last week Telefonos de Mexico, of which Trouyet is chairman, launched a $200 million, five-year expansion program to double the number of phones and long-distance lines in the country. Celulosa de Chihuahua, of which Trouyet is co-founder and 8% owner, is in the midst of a $15 million expansion that will double its annual production of pulp to 110,000 tons. At the same time, Trouyet is putting the finishing touches on a deal to start a Mexican investment trust company, with assets of $8,000,000.

Public Share. Like most of Mexico’s got-rich-quick tycoons, Trouyet has close ties with the country’s ex-Presidents, particularly Multimillionaire Miguel Alemán, who has a large stake in Mexico City’s Continental Hilton hotel, of which Trouyet is chairman. But Trouyet differs from the usual run of Mexican businessmen in two important ways. He does not complain about the government’s growing ownership of Mexican business, and he has done more than anyone to encourage public share-ownership in a country where tightly held family businesses are the rule. With a philosophy that enrages the Communists, who have made him their No. 1 target in Mexican business, Trouyet says: “By spreading ownership among the public, you nationalize in the classic way. Then the government has no reason to step in.”

The prime example of this is Teléfonos, which Trouyet has turned into Mexico’s biggest publicly held company. Nationalization talk was widespread in the late 1950s after its two previous controlling owners, International Telephone & Telegraph and Sweden’s Ericsson telephone group, passed word that they were becoming disenchanted with the then weak company. But Trouyet persuaded the government to let his private group buy it for $25 million, later sweetened the pot by putting three government men on the board. Today well-run Telefonos has about 50,000 shareholders in Mexico, and a fortnight ago 200,000 shares worth $1,800,000 were put on sale in the U.S. and Europe.

Back-Scratching. Born in the squalid red-light district of Mexico City to a French immigrant father and a Mexican mother, Trouyet began as an office boy in a bank. He made his way up through stock brokerage with a knack for winning important friends. Making himself useful to other like-minded coyotes—including Banker Anibal de Iturbide and Insurance King Manuel Senderos—Trouyet cut them in on his deals, in turn was let in on theirs. Last year he persuaded Textile Tycoon Je-ronimo Arango Sr. to join him in buying a 55% stake in the big old Orizaba textile company—fully appreciating that Arango’s three sons run Mexico’s largest discount retailing chain (TIME, Feb. 8) and would provide a fine outlet for Orizaba’s garments.

A tireless man who has never had time to use the swimming pool of his $150,000 Mexico City home, Trouyet sleeps scarcely five hours a night, has logged 57 trips abroad in the past two years. On a recent five-day jaunt, he conferred with Spanish investors about buying into a Mexico City department store, chatted with officials of Italy’s Snia-Viscosa about a Mexican chemical and fiber business that it shares with him, negotiated with Fiat about an auto-parts business that he is starting at home, discussed in Chicago a Mexican railroad-car-renting venture that he has a share in. “I spend my spare time working,” says Trouyet, “and I collect companies as my hobby.”