Carlos Slim Hel is a Mexican business tycoon, financier, and philanthropist who was born on January 28, 1940. The Forbes business journal named Slim as the richest person in the world from 2010 to 2013. Through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso, he made his money from his substantial ownership in a sizable number of Mexican corporations. With a net worth of $96 billion as of June 2023, he was the richest person in Latin America according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which placed him as the 11th richest person in the world.
Several sectors of the Mexican economy are covered by Slim's business conglomerate, including those in education, health care, industrial manufacturing, transportation, real estate, mass media, energy, hospitality, entertainment, technology, retail, sports, and financial services. Other sectors include energy and real estate. The majority of Slim's wealth comes from the telecommunications industry, where he has shares in América Móvil, Mexican carrier Telcel, and Internet service provider Telmex, a state-run business that went private and maintained a near monopoly for many years after Slim's takeover. He is responsible for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange, and his net worth is almost 6% of Mexico's GDP. He is The New York Times Company's single-largest shareholder as of 2016.
Earlier Years
Slim was born on January 28, 1940, in Mexico City to Lebanese Maronite Christians Julián Slim Haddad and Linda Hel Atta. Young Carlos made the decision to pursue business as a career, and his father gave him business lessons. He taught him the fundamentals of finance, business management, and accounting by showing him how to analyse, interpret, and read financial statements. He also stressed to the young Carlos the value of maintaining accurate financial records when conducting business.
Slim bought a government savings bond when he was 11 years old, which introduced him to the idea of compound interest. He finally stored every financial and commercial transaction he ever did into a personal ledger book, which he still retains today, in accordance with his father's emphasis on the necessity of maintaining precise financial records. At the age of 12, he made his first investment in stocks by purchasing all the stock in a Mexican bank. Slim had acquired stock in Mexico's largest bank before the age of 15. He started working for his father's business at the age of 17, earning 200 pesos a week.[18] He then pursued civil engineering studies at Mexico's National Autonomous University. There he concurrently taught linear programming and mathematics.
Slim majored in civil engineering but also showed a keen interest in economics. After finishing his engineering degree, he studied economics in Chile. Slim, who received his degree in civil engineering, has said that his aptitude for mathematics and his experience with linear programming gave him a competitive edge in the business world, particularly when he was analysing the financial statements of potential companies to make business decisions and assessing potential investment acquisitions and stock purchases.
Career In Business
After earning his degree in 1961, Slim began his commercial career in Mexico as a stock trader, sometimes putting in 14-hour days to establish himself in the country's economic community. When Slim's individual businesses and investment endeavours generated income of $400 000 in 1965, he was able to launch the stock brokerage firm Inversora Bursátil. He also started constructing the financial foundation for Grupo Carso, his future empire. He also bought the Mexican soft drink and bottling firm Jarritos del Sur in 1965. He founded the Mexican real estate firm and holding business Inmuebles Carso in 1966, with an estimated value of $40 million USD.
The Mexican economy saw a sharp decline in 1982. Slim started investing significantly and bought shares in several Mexican flagship companies at low prices while banks were having trouble and foreign investors were scrambling to cut down on their investments. A large portion of Slim's commercial activities comprised a straightforward approach, which entailed either keeping a company for its cash flow or eventually selling the stock at a higher profit, netted the capital gains and reinvested the original capital into a new company. Furthermore, the corporate conglomerate structure of Grupo Carso enables Slim to acquire a number of holdings across a variety of industries, making the total conglomerate almost recession-proof in the event that one or more industry sectors of the Mexican economy do not perform well.
Early in the 1990s, when the Mexican government started privatising its communications sector, Slim made a windfall fortune. He purchased Telmex, a landline telephone operator, from the Mexican government through his company Grupo Carso. Grupo Carso went public in 1990, first in Mexico and later all around the world. In 1990, Grupo Carso also bought the majority of Porcelanite, a manufacturer of tiles.
Slim sold the broadcast rights for the Leon games to the website mediotiempo.com, the Mexican and Latin American cable network Fox Sports, and the American terrestrial television network Telemundo in 2012. The games are also aired online via UNO TV, a Telmex service. Slim has been interested in sports broadcasting to larger markets outside of Mexico, including the United States. América Móvil purchased the Latin American broadcast rights for the Olympic Games in Brazil in 2016 and Sochi in 2014 in March 2012.
Shazam, a British commercial mobile phone-based music recognition service, received a US$40 million investment from Slim's business America Movil in July 2013 in exchange for an unknown ownership stake. In order to support the business' expansion into television and advertising as well as the growth of the audio recognition service in Latin America, America Movil teamed with the firm.
A Latin American version of iTunes and Spotify, Claro Musica is an online music service that was officially introduced by Grupo Carso in January 2015. Since 2013, Slim and his son have stepped up their corporate involvement in Mexico's music market, notably in the retail music sector. Sanborn's, the Slim-owned chain of Mexican department stores, owns a controlling ownership in Mixup, the country's top music retailer with a network of 117 locations. In 2014, Mixup produced more than US$320 million in revenue.
Real Estate
Slim is a pro at investing in properties. Since the 1960s, his real estate holding firm, Inmobiliaria Carso, has built, invested in, acquired, and managed a large number of residential and commercial real estate assets throughout Mexico. His real estate company built Plaza Carso in Mexico City, which serves as the headquarters for the majority of his commercial endeavours. Slim has made private real estate investments outside of Mexico from the early 2000s through the mid-2010s, mainly in Spain and the US.