A Curious Capital Flow: Canadian Investment in Mexico, 1902–1910

Though Canada was, in the opening decades of the twentieth century, a net capital importer, Canadian-based companies dominated the Mexican public utilities industry. In this article, Professors Armstrong and Nelles explain how this “curious capital flow” came about. Their explanation stresses the personal ties linking Canadian businessmen to the maverick American engineer-entrepreneur F.S. Pearson. In addition to detailing these ties, they describe the methods used to finance the promotions, speculate about the insiders' rates of return, and estimate the origins and magnitude of the capital involved.