Carlos Slim Helú, the 72-year-old self-made Mexican telecom business mogul, is the world's richest person. According to Forbes, he has a net worth of approximately $72 billion dollars. Carlos has his fingers in many trades ranging from telecom, construction, and tobacco to restaurant business and media. He is a major contributor to the Obama campaign, a philanthropist, and an astute investor. Carlos seems to have the Midas touch with his uncanny ability to identify potentially profitable ventures.
Carlos Slim's Childhood
Carlos Slim was born in Mexico City, on 28th January 1940. His parents, Yusef Salim Haddad and Linda Helu, were Lebanese Christian immigrants. He grew up in a big family with five siblings. Carlos's father was a successful business man who owned a textile store (La Estrella del Oriente) and was quite wealthy.
Carlos was a bright child who performed well in school. From a very early age, he began to learn the ropes of business from his father. As a 12-year-old boy he purchased shares in a bank and a few years later he worked at his father's company. He decided to study engineering after completing his high school and obtained his degree from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. During his university education, Carlos continued to earn money by working as a part-time teacher.
Carlos Slim's Metoric Rise to a Conglomerate King
After he completing his graduation, Slim went on open his own brokerage and investment firm in Mexico City. His early acquisitions during the 1960s comprised construction, manufacturing, and retail firms. He used the profits made from these businesses to fund further acquisitions. Eventually in the 1980s he formed his family holding company named Grupo Carso. The name Carso is a combination of the first letters of his name and that of his wife, Soumaya. Today, Grupo Carso is the parent company of a staggeringly large conglomerate of over 200 companies.
In 1982 Mexico experienced a financial meltdown after a fall in global oil prices. The Mexican government failed to honor foreign debt payments and the value of peso dropped drastically. It was during this period that Carlos Slim heavily invested in Mexico by purchasing assets at low prices. He bought Mexican companies such as Reynolds Aluminio, Bimex hotels, and acquired a large percentage of the British American Tobacco's Mexican holdings. He also managed to turn these businesses into profitable ventures. Once the Mexican economy recovered, Carlos was among its most successful business men.
Carlos's tour de force was the acquisition of Telmex, the Mexican telephone company, from the Mexican government in 1990. Carlos formed a consortium with France Télécom and Southwestern Bell Corporation (SBC) to buy shares in Telmex. Along with his partners, he invested ten million dollars in Telmex to modernize it and turn it into a healthy business. In return he negotiated a seven year guarantee of monopoly status from the government. His business continued to grow throughout the 1990s with a string of successful acquisitions. Toward the end of 1990s, Carlos began to expand beyond Latin America.
Increasing Foreign Expansion
Carlos Slim is household name in Mexico where it is almost impossible to do business without dealing with his company. However, for majority of his career Carlos Slim had remained relatively unknown outside Mexico. This started to change with his increasing foreign expansion. During the 1990s he created Telmex USA and bought a stake in the U.S. cell phone firm, Trackfone. He began to be known as the telecom king. One of his companies, America Movil, has operations in over 11 countries. Telmex continues to operate almost 90% of telephone lines in Mexico.
In 1999 Grupo Carso acquired 15% holding in CompUSA, a retail store and IT services chain, which did not quite work out. The company lost business to competitors like Dell Computers, who sold directly to consumers, as well as to other retail chains. In 2007, slim sold CompUSA; this is a rare mistake in Carlos Slim's otherwise impeccable record of successful business decisions.
A Family Man
Since the past two decades, Carlos Slim has been handing over business responsibilities to his sons and other relatives. Carlos has been grooming his son from their childhood to become good business men and take charge of his empire. In the late 1990s, he made his oldest son, Carlos Slim Domit, the chairman of Grupo Carso. His young sons, Marco Antonio and Patrick Slim Domit have also taken over the reins of the business.
Carlos Slim is an enigma. He is a down-to-earth, simple man who does not use private jets or have extravagant offices. While he is a giant in the telecom field, he admits that he prefers old fashioned paper to laptops. He is the head of several charitable organizations, though he maintains a sceptical view of charity. Carlos continues to dabble in business and holds 'honorary lifetime chairman' title in Telmex.
Seema Misra has a Masters degree in Clinical Psychology, and currently works as a freelance writer and copy editor. Her writing skills include academic writing, technical writing, article writing and web content writing. She is a perfectionist and always completes projects within the required time frame.
She has worked with ANSR Source as a Quality Analyst and Content Developer; she worked on creating and editing academic supplements for leading international publishers.
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