Carlos Slim simply known as Carlos Slim (born January 28, 1940), is a Mexican engineer, businessman and philanthropist largely focused on the telecommunications industry. Slim has a substantial influence over the telecommunications industry in Mexico and much of Latin America. He controls Telephones companies. Slim was born in Mexico City, Mexico. His father, Julian Slim, arrived in Mexico in 1902 from Lebanon, alone at 14 years of age and speaking no Spanish. Carlos Slim’s mother, Linda was born in Parral, Chihuahua. In August 1926, Julia Slim and Linda Helu married in Mexico City. Slim studied engineering at the Universidad National Autonoma de México. The youngest daughter, Johanna, is married to Arturo Elias Ayub, a board member of some of Slim’s companies.
Slim has been vice-president of the Mexican Stock Exchange and president of the Mexican Association of Brokerage Houses. Slim currently sits on the Board of Directors for Philip Morris International. In 1997, just before the company introduced its iMac line, Slim bought three percent of Apple Computer’s stock, which has skyrocketed over the years.
He built the large Mexican financial-industrial conglomerate Grupo Carso which controls, among other companies, Sanborns, Mixup, Sears Mexico, Cigatam, Condumex and Grupo Hotelero Hostam and had indirect control over the CompUSA electronics retail chain.
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim uses public transportation and lives in the same Mexico City house he purchased with his wife Soumaya 40 years ago. Slim, a 70-year-old son of a Lebanese immigrant built a fortune Forbes pegs at $53.5 billion on the privatization of Mexico’s telecommunications. The bulk of that wealth consists of holdings in his companies, which carry an enormous weight in the economic life of Mexico.
Slim’s son-in-law and sometimes spokesman, Arturo Elias Ayub, an executive at Telephones de Mexico SAB, the country’s dominant fixed-line phone company and the linchpin of Slim’s fortune, said Slim’s No. 1 status reflects investors’ “confidence.”
Slim’s father arrived in Mexico from Lebanon in 1902 and made a small fortune by acquiring property during the Mexican Revolution. Slim’s own strategy has been to buy struggling companies on the cheap and turn them into cash cows.
Since then, Slim has profited from taking risks on troubled companies. Now a widower, Slim turned over the daily operations of his companies to his children in 2004. One son, Patrick Slim, is chairman of America Moville, Latin America’s largest mobile-phone company; another, Carlos Slim Demit, is at the helm of Slim’s holding company Grupo Carso; and a third, Marco Antonio Slim, leads the banking company in bursa. Two of Slim’s daughters are married to telecom executives within their father’s corporate empire.
Slim has had to fight charges of monopolistic practices that critics say are essentially sanctioned by the Mexican government. His control of Mexico’s telecommunications, restaurants, retail stores, banking, construction companies and an industrial conglomerate lead some to say it is impossible for a Mexican to go a day without generating income for Slim’s businesses.
Slim has donated $10 billion since 2006 through his two foundations. Slim and the eight other Mexicans on Forbes’ list — including drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera — are collectively worth $90.3 billion, equivalent to 10 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product.
Now, at 67, Slim is the world’s second-richest man and is closing quickly on Bill Gates, according to Forbes magazine’s most recent rankings. Slim’s business empire stretches from Mexico to the United States – it includes major stakes in companies such as CompUSA and Saks Fifth Avenue – yet most Americans have never heard of him.
Slim accumulated his $53.1 billion fortune by collecting companies in much the same way he did baseball cards. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments complained recently that Mexico’s economic growth is stunted because large conglomerates such as Slim’s have too much control.
During a two-hour interview in Spanish in his Mexico City office, Slim puffs a cigar and offers similarly strong opinions on everything from Mexico’s future to Bill Gates’ charity efforts.
Slim’s many obsessions still include baseball. Slim says he inherited his drive from his father. Julian Slim opened a general store, called the Star of the Orient, in Mexico City just as the violent Mexican Revolution was beginning to sweep the country in 1911.
Slim also adopted his father’s penchant for profiting during crisis. During the 1980s, when Mexico’s economy buckled under a debt crisis and other businessmen scrambled to get their money out of the country, Slim snapped up stock at fire-sale prices. The Mexican government was auctioning off several state-owned enterprises, including Telephones de México, the state-run telephone company, also known as Telmex. Slim and his partners, France Telecom and Southwestern Bell, beat two other groups of bidders. The company owns about 90 percent of Mexico’s phone lines.
After acquiring Telmex, Slim’s net worth increased dramatically. At the Carso Group, the holding company for many of Slim’s investments, Rule No. 6 on the list of 10 corporate principles is: “Money that leaves the company evaporates.”
The domination of large Mexican conglomerates such as Slim’s chokes off growth of smaller companies, says Celso Garrido, an economist at Mexico City’s Autonomous Metropolitan University who studies Mexico’s business dynasties.
Even Slim compares his business model with that of another company often accused of monopolistic practices: Wal-Mart.
Along with Telmex, Slim controls America Moville, the world’s fifth-largest cell phone company with 124 million customers in 15 countries. Slim’s holdings, in business and beyond, are now so vast that he sometimes loses track of what he owns. Slim’s fortune has surged in recent months – by at least $23 billion since February 2006, Forbes says – primarily because of his holdings in Mexico’s booming stock market. Mexican President Felipe Calderon pledged in April to make it easier for companies to enter the telephone market.
Slim came under fire again last June, when Bill Gates announced he would retire from Microsoft in 2008 to devote his time to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Slim says such projects would create more jobs than charity projects undertaken by Gates and Buffett.
Slim says overall, he’s optimistic about Mexico’s future. Meanwhile, Slim has begun passing day-to-day control of his companies to others, including his three adult sons. I remember there was a time when the value of his enterprises was very low,” recalls Patrick, the youngest son of Carlos Slim Helu. Periodically the elder Slim would round up his three teenage sons for an economics lesson. Sitting them down in the living room of the family home, Slim would produce a single handwritten list. For Slim, a onetime math instructor, this was no mere academic exercise. “Slim is one of a dozen fat cats in Mexico who impede that country’s growth because they run monopolies or oligopolies,” says Grayson. Wooing the public isn’t exactly a favorite activity for the Slims. Meanwhile, his sons are doing what the Slims do best: making more money.
Anyone expecting to find monuments to the Slim financial empire in Mexico City – a gleaming Telmex tower jutting out of the skyline or an America Moville stadium – would leave disappointed. “Mr. Slim sometimes likes to eat his lunch here,” Elias adds.
The famous Slim thrift – he used to show up for business meetings wearing a cheap calculator watch – extends across the entire company. Julian Slim started a general store and bought commercial real estate in downtown Mexico City during the 1910 Revolution. The country defaulted on foreign-debt payments, investors fled Mexico, and companies traded for centavos on the peso. Slim was able to scoop up assets on the cheap. “You make it fun,” Slim says. The Mexican economy eventually recovered, and by the late 1980s Slim was one of the country’s most successful businessmen. When the government put the state-owned telephone company, Telephones de México, up for sale, Slim jumped. A Slim rep declined to comment.
More recently Slim has been pragmatically investing in multiple parties, a common practice among Mexico’s oligarchs.
Mr. Slim cut off the questioner and defended his stewardship of a vast business empire. Mr. Slim, Mexico’s richest man and now a major shareholder in and lender to The New York Times, has a complex relationship with the news media. With telecommunications, retailing and construction companies under his command, Mr. Slim looms large over the media landscape in his country. Raymundo Riva Palacio, a veteran journalist in Mexico City, said that after he wrote a column in El Universal newspaper in 2006 condemning Mr. Slim as a monopolist, a Slim adviser threatened to remove newspaper ads from his companies.
Mr. Slim’s holdings are so vast that he controls a large chunk of all advertising countrywide. Mr. Elias, the Slim spokesman, said that no ads were removed and that Mr. Slim does not use his economic might that way. Mr. Slim built his fortune buying distressed companies and turning them around, but he joined the top ranks of the world’s billionaires when he bought the Mexican telephone monopoly, Telephones de Mexico, known as Telmex, from the government in 1990. Until recently, articles introducing the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim have often run under some variation of the headline: “The richest man you’ve never heard of.” Slim was anointed last week by Forbes magazine as the richest man in the world, unseating Microsoft founder Bill Gates. At first glance Slim’s unseating of Gates seems counter-intuitive. Slim comes from the relative backwater of Mexico, a country whose economy traditionally bleeds poor workers north across the Rio Grande in search of riches. All of which actually makes the current state of the world uniquely suited to a man of Slim’s talents. Slim is already buying again, snapping up stakes in Citigroup and the New York Times. Carlos Slim Helu was born the fifth of six children to Lebanese-Mexicans who ran successful small businesses in Mexico City. Slim took that lesson to heart.
Slim started young. There, waiting on the sidelines, as his father had taught him, was Slim. Slim was now a major player and he only got bigger. In 1990 Slim snapped up Telmex, the former state telephone firm. Salinas’s privatizations created a new veneer of super wealth in Mexico. In 1991 the country had just two billionaires on Forbes’s rich list. Three years later, it had 24 and Slim was among the biggest. The sheer scope of Slim’s holdings is breathtaking. Mexicans have a mixed relationship with the world’s richest man. Detractors aside, there is something universally appealing about Slim. The rich may be different to the rest of us, but Slim is a quite human billionaire.
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