The Man with Many Eyes

The average Canadian can hardly step outside his house without finding himself dealing in some way with one of the vast enterprises of Edward Plunket Taylor. At 62 Taylor still works tirelessly at turning a profit on his every interest, whether it be racing horses, brewing beer and ale, or basking in the hot sun of the Bahamas. His personal wealth does not make him Canada's richest businessman, but his financial empire makes him the most influential. Spread out over some dozen industries, it has grown with such speed and success that a longtime associate of Taylor claims that "Eddie has created more jobs for Canadians than anyone outside the government."

At the core of Taylor's operations is the Toronto-based Argus Corp., named for the mythological Greek guardian who boasted 100 eyes. As the founder and president of many-eyed Argus, Taylor has made a specialty of applying his shrewd management skills to reviving faltering firms. Unlike investment companies that pop in and out of situations for quick profits, Argus gains working control of a company and stays on to guide it with its own hand-picked management team. It has brought a dramatic revival to Farm-Machinery Maker Massey-Ferguson (TIME, June 15), organized Dominion Tar & Chemical Co. into a $340 million sales giant that makes everything from table salt to precast concrete, and built Dominion Stores into Canada's largest supermarket chain (350 stores). Argus also controls Canadian gold and iron mines, plywood and lumber mills, shopping centers, a satellite city, Canada's largest radio station (Toronto's CFRB) and Canadian Breweries (Carling's), the world's largest brewer of beer and ale. Total sales of

Argus-held companies last year: almost $2 billion.

Bing, Bing, Bing. Taylor's first business lessons came from his Irish-descended grandfather, an adventurous Ottawa financier. Says Taylor: "My grandfather's mind worked like mine--bing, bing, bing." After the 1929 crash and a brief career as a partner in an investment firm, young Taylor took over management of the struggling Brading Breweries, the last of his grandfather's besieged holdings. He quickly saw that small breweries would never survive, began quaffing down rivals with mergers and acquisitions that eventually produced Canadian Breweries.

Taylor did a wartime stint as a dollar-a-year man (much of it in Washington procuring arms for the British), at war's end decided to branch out from brewing and began borrowing heavily to buy Massey-Ferguson stock. His fellow Canadians did not have much faith in Taylor; the betting at the Toronto Club was 5-50 that he would go broke. The odds looked prophetic when he soon overextended himself. But, with superb ingenuity and timing, he formed Argus so that he could sell its stock to raise money to pay off his loans. As partners, he took in some prestigious names: W. Eric Phillips, head of the Duplate Canada subsidiary of Pittsburgh Plate Glass; John Angus McDougald. chairman of Avco of Canada; and M. Wallace McCutcheon. then chair man of National Life Assurance of Canada.* "Taylor is the idea man." explains Phillips, "but if he didn't have us as a balance wheel, he would go broke."

Millionaires' Roost. Taylor seldom appears at Argus' mausoleumlike Toronto offices, much preferring to work out of the comfortable gatehouse of his 600-acre suburban Toronto estate. A rider and horse lover since college, he operates Canada's most successful racing stable on his own (says Partner Phillips: "I detest horses"), has put Canada's horse racing on its feet by reorganizing it into a few big, profitable tracks. As a private investment, he is developing Lyford Cay in Nassau into a restful roost for such multi millionaires as Henry Ford II and CBS Chairman William Paley. But Taylor has put most of his effort into building Carling's beer into the fourth largest seller in the U.S.. is now moving his beer into Britain. Ireland and even the Bahamas.

Partly because in the past he was denied financial backing by cautious Canadians, Taylor is impatient with both Canadian businessmen ("They've got to get off their duffs") and the new wave of Cana dian nationalism ("Have you ever heard of anything more outdated?"). A believer that older men should move on to new pastures to make way for bright younger men, he is ready to give up his four chairmanships at Argus (though probably not the presidency) when he reaches 65. Then he intends to turn his full attention to his first love: horses.

* Who recently resigned from Argus to join Prime Minister John Diefenbaker as a Cabinet member.

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