carlos slim helu yacht

For Slim, a onetime math instructor, this was no mere academic exercise. Yes, he wanted to instill in his sons the same lesson his father - a Lebanese immigrant who started acquiring real estate in Mexico City during the Revolution of 1910 - taught him: Though Mexico will have its ups and downs, don't ever count the country out. But Slim wasn't just teaching, he was buying. He spent $55 million on an insurance company. He took a stake in retailer Sanborns. He invested in a hotel chain.

Now those early investments are paying off big time. His three heirs - Carlos Jr., 40; Marco Antonio, 39; and Patrick, 38, run day-to-day operations at various Slim businesses and are increasingly making strategic decisions, while their father, who had heart surgery in 1997, pulls back. And Slim's investments in downtrodden Mexico? They laid the foundations of a sprawling, $150 billion business empire whose growth in recent months has turned Carlos Slim Hel� into the world's richest man.

By our calculations, the 67-year-old Slim has amassed a $59 billion fortune, based on the value of his public holdings at the end of July. This number puts him just ahead of perennial No. 1, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is estimated to be at least $58 billion. But Gates is selling off his single greatest source of wealth, Microsoft stock, to fund his foundation, while Slim's fortune is growing at a stunning clip. His net worth jumped $12 billion this year alone. His family's holdings represent more than 5% of Mexico's 2006 gross domestic product, and Slim-controlled companies make up one-third of the $422 billion Mexican Bolsa, or stock exchange.

Portly and often puffing a cigar, Slim could pass for a latter-day Latin American J.P. Morgan. But with his dominant stakes in everything from phones to finance, his business profile more closely resembles that of John D. Rockefeller, who likewise thrived in a loosely regulated environment. (For the record, though, even in current dollars Rockefeller's wealth pales in comparison to Slim's: At his death in 1937, Rockefeller was worth $20.3 billion, representing one fifty-second of 1937 U.S. GDP.) The average Mexican encounters a Slim-owned business when she visits an ATM, drives a car, stops for coffee, and especially when she picks up the phone - Slim's Tel�fonos de M�xico controls 92% of the country's phone lines, and his Am�rica M�vil wireless service has a 70% market share. George W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary, coined the term "Slimlandia" to describe how entrenched the Slim family's companies are in the daily life of Mexicans.

It's not a reverential term. Many Mexicans hoped privatization, which began in the early 1990s, would create competition and drive prices down drastically. That hasn't happened. "Slim is one of a dozen fat cats in Mexico who impede that country's growth because they run monopolies or oligopolies," says Grayson. "The Mexican economy is highly inefficient, and it is losing its competitive standing vis-�-vis other countries because of people like Slim."

"The accusations are not well-founded," Carlos Jr. fires back during an interview. He then pulls out an analyst's report showing how the average price of long-distance phone service in Mexico compares with that in other countries. Mexico is third cheapest, according to the report, behind the U.S. and Finland. (A recent study by the World Bank paints a different picture, showing that Mexico's rates for monthly service and residential phone hookups are among the highest in the developing world.)

Wooing the public isn't exactly a favorite activity for the Slims. "I think sometimes when you are successful in business," says Slim in heavily accented English, "you have others trying to turn public opinion against you because they are trying to compete with you." Slim, however, is beginning to court public opinion, pledging earlier this year to increase the size of his charitable foundations. 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 Am�rica M�vil stadium - would leave disappointed. In fact, Am�rica M�vil, Latin America's largest provider of wireless services, is housed in a converted tire factory. The juxtaposition of austerity and wealth can be quite odd, as evidenced by a recent visit to the headquarters of Inbursa, Slim's financial business. Just beyond the lobby is a makeshift art gallery that features a rotating selection of paintings on loan from the Museo Soumaya, a Slim-financed fine-arts museum named after his wife, who died in 1999. The room is a bit shabby. It is poorly lit and smells faintly of cigarettes; several large crates are propped against one of the walls. "We had several El Grecos here," Arturo Elias Ayub, Slim's son-in-law and spokesman, says matter-of-factly. There's also a folding table in the center of the room. "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. Years ago he wrote "official principles" for Grupo Carso, his industrial conglomerate, which are distributed annually to all employees. One tenet translates into English as follows: "Maintain austerity in prosperous times (in times when the cow is fat with milk); it accelerates corporate development and avoids the need for drastic change in times of crisis." So, for example, TelMex's net debt equals Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, a statistic that's unheard-of in its industry, where debt is typically three times cash flow. Am�rica M�vil actually has less debt than Ebitda. "They're rabid about costs," says New York-based Citi investment research analyst Patrick Grenham. "They borrow as little as possible and very carefully."

Slim inherited his head for numbers - and his knack for bottom-fishing - from his father, Julian, who fled to Mexico in 1902 to avoid the Ottoman Empire's military draft. Julian Slim started a general store and bought commercial real estate in downtown Mexico City during the 1910 Revolution. He required his young son to record his childhood purchases in notebooks; Slim, a bit of a pack rat, keeps some of the ledgers on a shelf in his office.

Though he taught math to make money in college, Slim graduated with a degree in engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the early 1960s. He then started a stock brokerage in Mexico City and began to acquire industrial companies he deemed bargains. He would reinvest the cash from those businesses or use it to acquire additional properties, and he named his holding company Grupo Carso ("Carso" is an amalgam of his first name and Soumaya's).

Then came the crash of the Mexican economy in 1982. 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. All the while, he was schooling his heirs on his investments, occasionally even seeking their counsel to test their business savvy - such as the time he asked 12-year-old Patrick if he should acquire cigarette maker Cigatam (he did). "You make it fun," Slim says. "It is one thing to listen to a father lecture. It is better to learn from experience."

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, Tel�fonos de M�xico, up for sale, Slim jumped. He partnered with SBC (now AT&T ( Charts , Fortune 500 )) and France T�l�com to buy 20% of the company in late 1990 for about $2 billion - a fair price, based on other phone companies' market values at the time. What rankled would-be competitors of TelMex (including U.S. long-distance companies such as MCI) were the terms of the privatization: Slim and company got what amounted to a seven-year guarantee of monopoly status at a time when phone companies around the world had the money - and will - to expand into new markets.

Further clouding the deal was the fact that Slim was a huge contributor to Carlos Salinas de Gortari's PRI party. In his book about Mexican politics Bordering on Chaos, author Andr�s Oppenheimer describes a 1993 dinner party in which Salinas's people solicited 30 Mexican businessmen for contributions. According to Oppenheimer's account, Slim was willing to give but told the group he "wished the funds had been collected privately, rather than at a dinner, because publicity over the banquet could 'turn into a political scandal.'" Oppenheimer writes that the businessmen present pledged to contribute an average of $25 million apiece. A Slim rep declined to comment.

"He made his billions because of an extremely close and advantageous relationship with the Salinas government," says professor Grayson of William & Mary. More recently Slim has been pragmatically investing in multiple parties, a common practice among Mexico's oligarchs.

World's Richest Man: The Carlos Slim Story

The Mexican mogul's key strategies

How's this for clout: Lebanese-Mexican Carlos Slim Helú controls over 200 companies, has a fortune estimated at $53.5 billion, and is responsible for about 7 percent of Mexico's economic output . He is Forbes's richest man in the world, knocking Bill Gates off the top pedestal. In the last two years his wealth has increased by $40 billion. How did he do it? What business lessons can be gleaned from his rise? Here's what business writers are saying:

• A Case-Study in Monopoly Building writes David Luhnow in The Wall Street Journal: "How did a Mexican son of Lebanese immigrants rise to such heights? By putting together monopolies, much like John D. Rockefeller did when he developed a stranglehold on refining oil in the industrial era. In the post-industrial world, Mr. Slim has a stranglehold on Mexico's telephones. His Teléfonos de México SAB and its cellphone affiliate Telcel have 92% of all fixed-lines and 73% of all cellphones. As Mr. Rockefeller did before him, Mr. Slim has accumulated so much power that he is considered untouchable in his native land, a force as great as the state itself."
• He Believes in IT Above All Else, writes Bruce Watson at Daily Finance:

He has claimed that his close friend, futurist Alvin Toffler , has had a distinct influence on his investment strategy. For the past 30 years, Toffler has argued that the world is entering a 'third wave' post-industrial society, in which the flow of information is key for the production of money. That might explain why Slim has pursued investments, including Telmex, that have given him a stranglehold on the pipeline of electronic information flowing through Mexico. The connection between Toffler's predictions and Slim's investments is hardly accidental: When the two first met in 1993, Slim was carrying a well-thumbed, heavily-annotated copy of one of Toffler's books . Slim admits that much of his fortune has come from his ability to recognize opportunities before anyone else, a skill that he attributes to his analysis of Toffler. Today, he reviews the writer's manuscripts before they are published.

• Old Media Beats New Media, writes Drew Grant at Mediaite: "Even though Slim made his fortune in telecommunications, he’s most known in American media for his ties with The Times. So by beating out Bill Gates, maybe what we’re seeing here is actually a backward trend of billionaires becoming richer by investing in old, not new, media."
• It's All About Cross-Border Stock Markets, writes Andrew Clark in The Guardian: "The old order is under threat at the world's billionaires club. Traditionally dominated by Americans and Europeans, the top ranks of the world's richest people have been infiltrated by scores of ultra-rich entrepreneurs from the developing world – capped by the Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim ... Economists say that a rapid rise in super-wealthy individuals from the developing world reflects the pace of globalisation, with cross-border stockmarkets allowing international investors to pump funds at the touch of a button into major corporations in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East."

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

Investments in Corporations

Real estate, planes and automobiles, collectibles, transfers to his children, philanthropy, the bottom line.

• Business Leaders
• Rich & Powerful

Where Does Carlos Slim Keep His Money?

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Charlene Rhinehart is a CPA , CFE, chair of an Illinois CPA Society committee, and has a degree in accounting and finance from DePaul University.

Carlos Slim Helú is a huge success story. The entrepreneur, whose Lebanese parents emigrated to Mexico in 1902, made a fortune from big bets on undervalued assets and Mexico's privatization drive in the late 1980s and 1990s. Today, he owns numerous assets. His business empire covers various sectors, from department stores, restaurants, and telecoms to construction, real estate, mining, and petroleum. As of Feb. 20, 2024, Slim has a net worth of $102.2 billion.

Most of Slim's money is tied up in investments, including stock, collectibles, and real estate. He is not into living lavishly and prefers his fortune to grow.

Key Takeaways

• Carlos Slim has a net worth of about $100 billion.
• Most of his money is tied up in investments, including stock, collectibles, and real estate.
• Slim doesn't like spending money on lavish living and has a frugal lifestyle.
• Carlos Slim's main source of wealth is the telecom giant América Móvil.

Slim controls many companies through Grupo Carso , the conglomerate he and his family own a 79% stake in. The name "Carso" stands for Carlos Slim and Soumaya Domit de Slim, his late wife.

Carso's empire spans several sectors, including retail, infrastructure and construction, energy, and telecommunications. If you live in Mexico, it's likely you're using one of Slim's services. Carso dominates across many sectors. That and lots of acquisitions have significantly boosted revenue and caught the attention of investors. The conglomerate's share price has risen 116% over the past five years, giving it a market capitalization, as of Feb. 20, 2024, of 341.80 billion Mexican pesos ($20.02 billion).

Slim also owns other companies, including América Móvil . The telecom giant is perhaps his defining investment and the source of a large chunk of his fortune.

Slim's MO is to buy troubled or underappreciated assets for cheap, fix them, and then flip them for a big profit.

Slim's parents made their fortune in real estate, buying top property in Mexico City for cheap during the Mexican Revolution. Their son followed this tradition of investing in property.

In Mexico, he owns over 20 shopping centers, including 10 in Mexico City, and operates stores in the country under U.S. brands including Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, and the Coffee Factory.

He also owns a lot property in the U.S. As with his other investments, Slim aims to buy cheap and sell high.

In 2010, Slim purchased the Duke Semans mansion (also known as the Benjamin N. and Sarah Duke House) on Fifth Avenue in New York City, one of the largest private residences in all of Manhattan. Paying a reported $44 million for the property, it boasts over 19,000 square feet, has eight floors, and includes 14 bathrooms and 12 bedrooms.

In 2015, Slim tried to sell the mansion, which is included in the National Register of Historic Places, for $80 million, nearly twice the amount he paid just five years prior. He relisted it at $80 million again in January 2023.

Slim also bought the Marquette building in Detriot in 2015 and sold it a few years later at a big profit.

Carlos Slim has often been described as frugal and not interested in living a lavish lifestyle. While many of his peers splash out on luxury yachts, mansions, and private jets, Slim is said to be more low profile. He has lived in the same house for 40 years.

Over the years, he has made the odd luxury purchase, though. For example, in 2012 he was said to own a rare Bentley Continental Flying Spur, a powerful luxury sedan.

Slim used to have a 17% stake in The New York Times .

Slim's late wife was an avid art collector, and he built the Museo Soumaya in her honor. It houses over 60,000 works of art, including the largest collection of Rodin art outside of France, as well as a host of masterpieces by Renoir, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, and Dali, just to name a few.

Carlos Slim spent around $34 million to build the museum, which was designed by architect Fernando Romero. This is also where he keeps his collection of rare coins, historical documents, and religious relics. The artwork and artifacts inside are reportedly worth almost a billion dollars.

Carlos Slim has allocated chunks of his business empire to his three sons and three daughters. Rather than simply handing his children cash, he is carving up and giving control of his businesses to them to run. Because Slim is in his 80s, this sort of estate planning ensures that his companies and wealth will continue to grow even after his death.

Carlos Slim is known to give money to charitable causes.

Fundación Carlos Slim, Slim's namesake charitable organization, focuses on philanthropy throughout Mexico and Latin America. It was created in 1986 and aims to help people of all ages "actively participate in economic and social development" and "achieve more opportunities and a better quality of life."

From 1996 to 2023, the foundation claims to have helped thousands of people get an education, receive medical help, achieve social justice, partake in sports, and survive natural disasters. From 2006 to 2019 alone, it was reported that Slim donated over $4 billion to the foundation. Most of these proceeds were said to come from dividends he collected from his investments.

Who Are the Richest People in Mexico?

As of Feb. 20, 2024, Carlos Slim is the richest with a net worth of $102. billion. In second place is Germán Larrea Mota Velasco, CEO of Grupo México (Mexico's largest mining corporation), with a net worth of $28.1 billion. And in third place is Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, who has a net worth of $13.6 billion.

How Much Money Did Carlos Slim Lose?

Carlos Slim's net worth has fluctuated over the years. The most notable drop in recent years was in 2016. During that year, America Movil stock dropped nearly 35%, due to new Mexican telecom regulations and a weaker Mexican peso.

What Is Carlos Slim's Heritage?

Carlos Slim was born in Mexico and is the son of Lebanese immigrants.

For Mexican entrepreneur Carlos Slim Helú, savvy investing in a diversified portfolio of financial assets, real estate, and collectibles helps ensure that his wealth will continue to grow. But beyond that, his philanthropic mission to donate much of his wealth to help better his home country of Mexico and Latin America may be his biggest investment and certainly a lasting legacy.

Forbes. " Carlos Slim Helu & Family ."

Grupo Carso. " History ."

Google Finance. " Grupo Carso SAB de CV ."

Britannica. " Carlos Slim Helú ."

Forbes. " Billionaire Carlos Slim Listing Fifth Ave Mansion For $80 Million, Almost Two Times What He Paid ."

Mansion Global. " Billionaire Carlos Slim’s New York City Megamansion Back on the Market for $80 Million ."

Forbes. " Carlos Slim's Real Estate Shopping Spree: PepsiCo's NY State HQ and Iconic Building in Detroit ."

HistoricDetroit.org. " Marquette Building ."

LinkedIn. " What Makes Carlos Slim Successful? "

Business Insider. " Check Out the Cars Driven by the World's Richest People ."

The New York Times T Magazine. " Now Dazzling | Museo Soumaya in Mexico City ."

Museo Soumaya. " About Us ."

Bloomberg. " Slim Unveils $34 Million Museum With Fine Art, Free Admission ."

The Telegraph. " Carlos Slim: At home With the World's Richest Man ."

Forbes. " Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim Is Quietly Transferring Assets to His Children ."

Carlosslim.com. " Social Activity ."

Forbes. " From Azim Premji to Carlos Slim: The World's Most Generous Billionaires Outside of the U.S. "

Forbes. " Real-Time Billionaires ."

Forbes. " Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu Lost $3.4 Billion After America Movil Stock Drop ."

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

• Member Interviews
• Science & Exploration
• Public Service
• Achiever Universe
• Summit Overview
• About The Academy
• Academy Patrons
• Delegate Alumni
• Directors & Our Team
• Golden Plate Awards Council
• Golden Plate Awardees
• Preparation
• Perseverance
• The American Dream
• Recommended Books
• Find My Role Model

All achievers

Carlos slim helú, financier and philanthropist, bad governments worry about the rich. good governments worry about the poor..

Carlos Slim’s father, Julién Slim Haddad, immigrated to Mexico from Lebanon at age 14. With one of his brothers, he opened a dry-goods store in Mexico City. When foreign investors fled the country following the revolution of 1910, Julián Slim resolved to remain in Mexico. By the 1920s, he had acquired a number of businesses and substantial real estate in the capital city. Julián married Doña Linda Helú, a daughter of Lebanese immigrants. The couple raised six children, of whom Carlos Slim Helú was the fifth.

The senior Slim encouraged all of his children to learn and understand finance. He gave each child a ledger to record expenditures. Young Carlos showed a special aptitude for numbers, and by age 12 was buying shares in the Bank of Mexico. When Carlos Slim was 13, his father died, and the next years were difficult for Carlos. He studied civil engineering at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), and while still studying, began to teach mathematics and linear programming. After a few years of teaching, Carlos Slim incorporated his first business venture, a stock brokerage, Inversora Bursátil . The same year, he married Soumaya Domit; in future ventures, he combined the first letters of their names, as in the name of his holding company, Grupo Carso. Remembering the lessons of thrift he had learned from his father, he and his growing family lived modestly, while earnings from his businesses were re-invested in expansion and more acquisitions. Over the next two decades, Carlos Slim astutely acquired companies he believed were undervalued and skillfully overhauled their management. He diversified methodically, investing in real estate, then a construction equipment company, then mining interests. The portfolio of Slim companies grew to include a printer, a tobacco company and retail stores.

In 1982, Mexico plunged into an economic crisis. The government defaulted on its foreign debts, and many Mexican investors rushed to expatriate their capital. Carlos Slim’s confidence in his country held firm, and he acquired the Mexican affiliates of Reynolds Aluminum, General Tire and the Sanborn’s chain of stores and cafeterias. As the economy recovered, Slim’s fortune grew, and his acquisitions accelerated. He acquired the Mexican interests of a number of U.S.-based brands: Firestone tires, Hershey’s chocolate, Denny’s coffee shops. He bought and merged a number of insurance companies into the giant firm Seguros Inbursa .

The greatest opportunity of all presented itself when the Mexican government began to divest itself of a number of state-owned monopolies. After taking the holding company public in 1990, Slim’s Grupo Carso, with French and American partners, purchased the state telephone company, Teléfonos de México (Telmex). Slim took a special interest in a small component of Telmex’s operations, the company’s fledgling cellular service. Slim had a unique idea for building the customer base for cell phone service in Mexico’s struggling economy. He sold the handsets with a month’s service prepaid, and rather than sending the customers a monthly bill, Slim enabled his customers to buy prepaid phone cards, using their minutes as needed. Telmex executives resisted the plan at first, convinced that aggressive promotion of prepaid cell phones would undermine the market for traditional landline service. As it happened, the prepaid program filled an enormous need, and the customer base grew by 66 percent every year for the next 15 years. In the wake of the dot.com bust of 2000, foreign-owned cellular ventures throughout Latin America floundered. Slim scooped them up, combining cellular services in a market he understood better than anyone else.

Soon his company América Móvil had become the largest wireless services provider in Latin America. As the demand for wireless communication exploded, Slim’s enterprise grew to meet it. By 2007, his group of companies was valued at an estimated $150 billion. When Fortune magazine and other sources calculated the wealth of the world’s leading businessmen, they concluded that Carlos Slim, with an estimated personal fortune of $59 billion, was the richest man on Earth.

Proceeds from Carlos Slim’s ventures have endowed a number of charitable foundations. Since 1986, the Carso Foundation has concentrated on developing Mexico’s human capital through education and training programs. In 2007, an additional endowment of $4 billion has expanded Carso Foundation’s efforts to build infrastructure, promote education and reduce poverty, not only in Mexico, but throughout Latin America. The Museo Soumaya , established in 1994, was named in honor of Slim’s late wife, who ran the institution for many years. The museum preserves a world-class collection of Mexican and European art, while funding art research and conservation activities and sponsoring traveling exhibitions. The Telmex Foundation is one of the largest philanthropic institutions in Latin America. In addition to activities in health, nutrition, conservation and disaster relief, it has provided university scholarships for hundreds of thousands of talented students who would otherwise be unable to pursue higher education. Slim himself was the principal donor to the long-term project to restore and revitalize Mexico City’s downtown, the Centro Histórico .

In 2008, Slim surprised the business world with his purchase of a 6.4 percent stake in the troubled New York Times Company. At the time his investment was made public, Slim’s holding in the company was valued at $27 million. The following year, as a global recession and declining advertising revenues took a particularly heavy toll on print-based “old media” companies, Slim made the Times Company a loan of $250 million. This infusion of cash, along with other strategic adjustments by Times management, steadied the company’s finances, and the Times repaid the loan, plus 14 percent interest, ahead of schedule. Slim and his family have purchased additional shares, raising their stake in the company to just over seven percent. They hold warrants to increase their holdings to 16 percent of the company’s total stock. Although Grupo Carso spokesmen denied any intention of buying out the Ochs-Sulzberger family, who have controlled the paper for generations, even the suggestion of such a plan caused a sharp rise in the price of New York Times stock, a dramatic demonstration of Carlos Slim’s influence in the word of finance.

Forbes magazine’s 2010 survey of the world’s great fortunes confirmed earlier estimates that Carlos Slim was the world’s richest man. The survey ranked him as the world’s richest man again in 2011 and 2012. In the midst of this staggering success, the Slim family remains an unusually close-knit one. As Carlos Slim devoted more of his time to his philanthropic enterprises, his three sons took the reins of major components of Grupo Carso.

Despite the family’s enormous wealth, political development threatened the centerpiece of their business. In 2012, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), returned to power in Mexico after 12 years in opposition. Newly elected President Enrique Peña Nieto pledged to increase competition in the national economy by reducing the power of the largest companies, such as América Móvil. In the two years following the election, the company, in which Slim and his family members control 57 percent, saw its value decline by nearly $17 billion. Despite the decline in its stock price, América Móvil retained its dominant market share. In 2014 the company had 272 million wireless subscribers. In Mexico, 70 percent of mobile phone subscribers and 80 percent of landline users were América Móvil customers.

Mexico’s Congress, at the behest of President Peña, prepared to impose antitrust penalties if the company did not reduce its share of the national market to less than 50 percent. Rather than submit to crushing penalties, Slim moved decisively and announced his decision to sell a number of the company’s assets. The operation of its wireless towers would be separated from the rest of the company, and he dropped his option to purchase a competitor, Dish Mexico. Although América Móvil would be losing 21 million customers and 4 million landlines, it stood to gain an estimated $8.6 billion in cash. Following Slim’s announcement, the company’s stock price soared to levels not seen since 2009. In the years to come América Móvil and the rest of Grupo Carso will operate in a more competitive marketplace, but  for several years, Carlos Slim vied with Microsoft’s Bill Gates for the title of the world’s richest man.

In the first month of 2017, Carlos Slim announced plans to launch a new television network in the U.S, to be called Nuestra Vision (“Our Vision”), presenting “100 percent Mexican content,” including news, movies and sports. The new network competes with Univision and Mexico’s Televisa for a potential audience of 11.7 million Mexican immigrants, or the estimated 35 million persons of Mexican origin or ancestry living in the United States. In May 2024, at 84 years old, Carlos Slim ranked 13th on Bloomberg’s wealth index with a fortune of $106 billion. The richest person in Latin America added about $28 billion to his net worth in 2023, benefiting from a surge in the Mexican peso that boosted the stock of companies in his diverse business empire, which spans construction, restaurants, and retail shops.

In 1982, when foreign investors were bailing out of Mexico’s troubled economy, Carlos Slim Helú bet on his country’s future and invested in a dizzying array of businesses, building an industrial empire, Grupo Carso, that included everything from candy and baked goods to automobile tires, mining and construction — from department stores and coffee shops to insurance and banking.

In the 1990s, he seized on another unexpected opportunity, investing in Telmex, the formerly state-owned telephone company. Slim focused on the most negligible area of the business, the fledgling mobile phone service. With only 25,000 customers in a nation of 90 million, it seemed an unpromising sector, but Carlos Slim had an extraordinary insight. Over the objections of Telmex executives, he implemented his “Gillette plan,” selling mobile phone handsets at a loss, like razor handles, and making a huge profit in prepaid phone cards. Slim’s plan enabled cash-strapped customers to use as much or as little phone service as they needed, without paying a monthly bill. By 2007, the company Slim built, América Móvil, had become the largest cellular phone service in Latin America and had made Carlos Slim the richest man in the world.

Now largely retired from business activities, Carlos Slim devotes his energies — and his vast fortune — to raising the standard of living throughout Latin America, through a network of foundations that are providing educational opportunities and health services, and building physical infrastructure from the Rio Grande to the Antarctic Circle.

When you went into the cell phone business, you introduced a major innovation, selling prepaid phone cards along with the cell phones, so the customers could determine in advance how much they wanted to spend per month. The executives at Telmex all thought this was a mistake. How did you know it would be such a success? After all, you were coming from the insurance industry.

Carlos Slim: Well, insurance is very interesting.

In insurance, if you make the insurance of one car, it’s gambling.   It’s risky.   If you make insurance of 100,000 cars, it’s statistics.   It’s clear these risks are not like one car; this is big numbers.   Statistics work with big numbers, not with one. When there are other businesses — let’s say we’re talking with prepaid telecommunications.   When we think about the prepaid and we talk about the prepaid business, what I like (about) the business was they have many positive things.   No?   Actually, I call it the “Gillette Plan” because in Gillette, you sell the razor — or you promote the razor — to sell shaves.   Here, we were promoting the handsets, subsidizing handsets to sell phone cards.   That was the concept. The concept was make a design of a packaging to have it in the supermarkets and to sell them. That you go, and like you buy a razor, you buy a telephone. You have all this great presentation, it’s special, et cetera, et cetera.

First, you will make it very popular because you can have it at the hand in all the supermarkets and every place. Second, you will have expenses, big expenses because there will be more churning, and you need to pay commissions for the cards, and you need to pay commissions for the handsets, but they were a different price.   Prepaid has a higher price — the prepaid minute than the postpaid.   It was interesting, because when you take in business average cost, you have mistakes.   You need to make the analysis of everything.   It’s not for the public, but I shall say that my partners didn’t like us, and they went to meet us to say, “We don’t agree with the prepaid program. It is not profitable. You are jeopardizing — you are cannibalizing the other market,” et cetera, et cetera. There was a lot of opposition to this concept. Actually, in Canada, in the U.S. and in other countries, it’s not very usual to have these prepaid programs like you see, in the market that has grown strongly. When you have a country with very low income, many countries with low income, it’s the best way. Because they have the handset that they subsidize, and they have the calling party that pays, and they buy cards when they need the cards and when they have the money to buy the cards. They don’t need to pay a fixed rate every month, because the revenues they have are not all uniform.   Sometimes they have the money, and sometimes they don’t have it. Developed countries don’t necessarily understand this program, no?   But I think it has been very important and very successful.   More than 90 percent of our market is prepaid in many countries of the world.   More than 90 percent is prepaid.   I think Nigeria is one of them, and China and India. It’s very popular, and I think we were beginning in ’94, ’95 with the concept, and we have done very well with this program.

You created a product that works with the financial rhythm of the customer.

Carlos Slim: Sure. We also segment the market, and when you segment the market, you can segment in postpaid. With just postpaid, maybe you don’t get all the market. With prepaid, you have all the people that don’t have a regular income, that sometimes have money and sometimes don’t. They want to have a control of the cost, and they want to manage it this way. No?

When the Mexican government was privatizing different industries, why did you choose the phone business? How did you know that the best return would be in cell phones?

Carlos Slim: When we got into Telmex, it was not very clear.

We were only two or three Mexican groups and 12 or 14 foreign groups, and we began to talk with all the foreign groups. We talk with maybe eight or ten, and we like a lot, as we see. We like France Télécom, and we agree to go for Telmex with them. Actually, we bought 25 percent of the company, not 100 percent — 25. Telmex was already in the stock exchange. The government has the majority. It was not 100-percent owned by the government. It was 50-something, and we paid like eight or ten times the value it had three years before. And we bought. Grupo Carso, not me. Grupo Carso, that was a public company. We bought five percent, 5.1, something like that, and SBC bought ten percent. The French bought 5.2, something like that. Another group of Mexicans, 5.2, and we bought that. The biggest stockholder was Southwestern Bell — afterwards called SBC — and in the market, many people win a lot of money, because the stock went from nothing to — we paid $8.6 billion for the 100 percent. That is 1.7 for the 20 percent. The mobile service was there. We had 25,000 customers, something like that. Now we have 150 million. We grew 66 percent for 15 years, every year.

How did we see that? Common sense.

That’s incredible growth. The Telmex executives thought promoting cell phones would cut into their customer base for land lines, but you found a gigantic untapped customer base for cell phones. How did you foresee that? Was it destiny?

Carlos Slim: Destiny? No.

I believe in circumstances, and I think that you make your own destiny, but your own destiny depends on the circumstances, and that in some way, you can say that circumstances take you to some destiny, but I believe in the freedom to create your own future. No? Because if it’s not there, it’s another place, but you will find it. It’s very clear just by common sense, the growing of mobile, because of many reasons. First, it is cheaper, because there are not the paraphernalia that you have in land line. You have a copper (wire) going from each home to other home, and big copper (wires) to the centrals. It’s very complicated, a land line company. No? A land line network. It’s like a water or power line. You need to have the pipe. You cannot send water by wireless, or energy, but you can send voice by wireless. You know about broadband TV. You know that with a big antenna, you (can) send to every place the signal. Well, if you can develop a network that you don’t need wire and cable and copper and all this, that means that is a lot more efficient and cheaper than the other. When you’re giving a land line, you are giving a land line to a house, to a home, but mobile is for a person, and there are more persons than houses. No? You can have maybe three or four persons per house. That means that if you have 20 million or 25 million houses, you have 100 million persons, and it is cheaper. The operation is a lot cheaper for communication.

And it’s cheaper to maintain.

Carlos Slim: The maintenance, the investment, everything. It was very obvious.

It wasn’t obvious to Telmex before you bought it. They only had 25,000 customers.

Carlos Slim: Well, it was because it was beginning the technology and the operation, and many telephone companies — land line companies — didn’t want to develop these, because you jeopardize the land lines, and we put them in to compete. We separated Telmex from América Móvil to compete between them, because the biggest competitor for local service is mobile.

Isn’t it like picking a favorite child, making them compete?

Carlos Slim: No. They’re not children. They’re not persons. If you have two organizations, you need to make them the best. If my children were going to be boxers or athletes, they’d need to compete between them. But in life, for your happiness, you don’t need to compete with no one.

• 21 photos

• Editorial Policy
• Editorial Calendar
• Photo Specifications (PDF)
• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• Rates and Positions
• Closing Dates
• Digital Ads
• Reprints (PDF)

Carlos Slim Helú

A Conversation with Carlos Slim

Editors’ Note

Carlos Slim Helú studied Civil Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico School of Engineering, where he also taught Algebra and Linear Programming while studying for his degree. In 1965, at 25 years of age, he began to build the foundations of Grupo Carso. Since the 1980s, Slim has been a noted businessman in various industrial, real estate, and commercial fields. He currently serves as Chairman of the board of directors of Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo en América Latina, S.A. de C.V. (IDEAL); Chairman of Fundación Telmex, A.C.; Chairman of Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, A.C.; Chairman of the Executive Committee of Consejo Consultivo de Restauración del Centro Histórico; and Chairman of Fundación del Centro Histórico, A.C. Slim continues to be active in business although his work is primarily focused on education, health, and employment in Mexico and Latin America through the foundations he chairs and companies in the infrastructure arena. His three sons have taken over the reins of his businesses. Slim has lectured at public and private institutions as well as at international organizations such as the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). He was the first Chairman of the Latin American Committee of the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange. In December 2008, Slim was nominated a member of Research and Development Corporate Executive Board.

Company Brief

Grupo Carso ( www.gcarso.com.mx ) has operations in heavy industry, services, retail, and consumer goods through CICSA, Condumex, Hoteles Calinda (now OSTAR Grupo Hotelero), Nacobre, Sears, Sanborns, and Promotora Musical. Grupo Carso currently encompasses the following holding companies: América Móvil, Grupo Financiero Inbursa, Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo en América Latina (IDEAL), Inmuebles Cars, and Minera Frisco.

Foundation Brief

The Carlos Slim Foundation ( www.carlosslim.com ) was created in 1986. With strong social and high impact programs focused on the most vulnerable population, the foundation has directly benefitted more than 29.7 million people. The foundation’s focus is on the following areas: education, health, nutrition, social justice, culture, human development, aid in natural disasters, economic development, protection and conservation of the environment, and aid to Latin America and sister nations, as well as to public and private institutions.

In light of economic challenges, is this a time of opportunity or is your outlook more reserved?

We have a long-term vision, resources, and a healthy company so there are always opportunities to be found in difficult times.

With problems in many developed countries now, the private sector will seek out possibilities for investment.

In terms of what is going on in Europe and the U.S., with big fiscal deficits and so much unemployment and lack of economic activity, governments need to defer to private investors, who can create the economic activity and jobs that countries need.

Economic activity for the business community is significant, especially with such low interest rates. The private sector can create a lot of projects that have better returns. With very lowcost financing and substantial resources in the banking system, a long-term vision is needed for economic activity in many countries.

Is there a good understanding of the opportunities for foreign investment in Mexico?

Many people focus on the BRICs without looking at the bigger picture. A country like Mexico has strong potential and we have seen a lot of national investment.

Mexico has a healthy banking system, healthy macroeconomics, and a good labor pool – our people have proven they can work hard and efficiently in all sectors of the economy.

So we have all the desired conditions to be a very attractive place for investments, both national and international.

When you look at countries that need to grow significantly, they require investments of 25 to 30 percent of gross national product. Often, the foreign investments are not more than 10 to 15 percent.

But in Mexico, foreign direct investments in recent years have been very active, so the potential for more in the near future is very strong.

For your businesses, do you see growth coming mainly from within Mexico or from international markets?

We have strong growth in Mexico. In the mining business, there are many Canadian companies and national Mexican companies involved. We have to invest around $70 or $80 billion a year in infrastructure and that will create a lot of opportunities.

There is also potential growth in housing and real estate. Mexico is a place with millions of people in many areas that have great potential for growth and development.

Is the government working closely with the private sector to encourage positive economic activity?

Yes. Mexico has instituted a new law regarding public/private partnerships that has been very successful. Many investments have gone in this direction over the past 10 years and, each time, with more intensity. In the future, there will be even more growth of this type of investment.

In all areas, public/private partnership is the best way to use private investment for public service.

In terms of these issues, what is the public sector role?

The only way the public sector can correct a fiscal deficit is by increasing revenues or decreasing expenses.

To increase revenues, you can increase taxes, which is tough for people because taxes are already high and further increases crunch a society.

Part of the solution is also selling assets and inviting the private sector to make the investments necessary to increase the economic activity of the country.

In this technological society with its freedom, diversity, and morality, the social society is most important. There are many things to be done, not only by entrepreneurs but also by investors. They will do it better and more effectively than governments that often spend to the extreme and are not solvent.

Carlos Slim Helú during the Carlos Slim Awards in Health ceremony

You are known as one of the most philanthropic people in the world. Where did that focus stem from?

It was due to my father’s thinking that we don’t take anything when we pass away. He considered us to be temporary managers of our businesses. We work to reinvest because the experience of the businessman is so important to solving social problems.

In 1986, we created a foundation to focus on our philanthropic activities. It’s clear we can and should do many things. I don’t see this as an option; I see it as a social responsibility.

With so much need, how do you decide which areas to support?

Our focus is on health and education. Many years ago, when we were analyzing what we should do, we decided to begin with the nutrition and health of a pregnant mother. We looked to reduce mother and child mortality by making sure the baby is born in the best possible conditions. There are many lifelong issues for the child that can be prevented by having a proper birth experience.

Our focus is also on the nutrition of the baby in the first two years of life, which is an important time in the child’s development.

I spoke with Mexico’s President at the time, Ernesto Zedillo, informing him that we had already worked with a public children’s hospital to create nutrition programs in two cities. These programs increased the baby’s birth weight by 15 percent. President Zedillo endorsed the program in 1996 and it was taken on by the government as public policy.

In terms of education, we need to move from traditional methods to education of the 21st century using today’s technology. We’re working with the Khan Academy to figure out how to give free education to everyone in Mexico, no matter where they live. Khan Academy offers many programs that we are looking to translate into Spanish. We are also working to create new programs not only for academic purposes but also for labor retraining. We are focused on the jobs that will be in demand over the next 10 years and on educating people in the skill sets that will be required for these jobs in fields such as information technology, tourism, health care, and education. Some of these programs can also be taken to other countries in Latin America and elsewhere.

In areas like education, we can have a national impact. A few years ago, we developed digital libraries. Instead of lending books, we lend laptops; instead of going to the library to read, patrons go to navigate. We have locations with high-speed Internet access and laptops and PCs that we lend out, which people can take home for 15 days at a time.

We also have digital classrooms and through this work, we can give universal access to education and the Internet to many people.

In health care, we are trying to innovate. During the last five years of life, 80 percent of the total lifetime health care cost of an individual is expended. We need to find new solutions, which we believe lie in genomics, so we are doing basic research in this field.

Also, in schools, there are many children who can’t see the blackboard and yet it is often not recognized. We have a program that offers glasses called “ver para aprender” – see to learn.

Another issue we focus on is contamination in rural areas – families cook with open flames using wood in the same space they sleep in, so rooms are contaminated with dangerous gases and contaminants. We support a program called Healthy Home to teach people how to build better stoves that vent gases out of the house.

We also conduct something called Outdoor Surgery, where we provide surgery in rural areas that do not have access to traditional hospitals. We work with the Mexican Academy of Surgery; they give free time and teach doctors in rural areas and, with the health center of the government, we mobilize to make it happen. The program currently provides more than 150,000 surgeries a year in Mexico. We also support this program in Peru with the Clinton Global Initiative and have vowed to do 50,000 surgeries there within three years; in the first two years, we have completed more than 40,000.

We are always looking at programs that have national impact and do not duplicate activities that others are already undertaking.

We have an art museum, for instance, that we make accessible at no charge to young people and families of any income to enjoy. We have already had 1.2 million visitors there.

We don’t put any limitations on the programs we support. Our approach is that all we can do, we will do.

We have another program called Help Me To Arrive. In rural schools, it takes many children as much as two hours to get to school. By providing bicycles through this program, it takes them only 20 minutes.

While you’re making major impact, it takes time to see results. Is it tough to be patient?

We move fast, but we are only at around 25 percent of what we can do – so we can do more.

Those of us in business have the responsibility that comes with great wealth. We should look to create jobs and pay taxes. Eliminating poverty is an economic need as well as a moral one. We need to help people out of poverty, train and educate them and put them in the labor market, and they will improve the economy and society.

We must recognize that the welfare of others is good for everyone. Over the past 15 years, in addition to my focus on philanthropy, I have also worked on activities that create jobs.

With all of your successes, did you experience tough times as well?

Actually, I expected it to get easier over time because with growth you have more alternatives including private participation. Economic activity is greater with globalization and we are just beginning to encounter worldwide opportunities that are emerging. There is no limit to what is coming.

What impact did your father have on your life?

My father was a special person. He came to Mexico in 1902 when he was only 14 years of age. He worked very hard and was very successful. He gave jobs to me and my two brothers so that he could teach us. He opened a store mainly to train us on how to work.

Carlos Slim with LEADERS President, David Schner, just prior to this September 22nd interview

Do you take interest in the recognition you receive on various lists, like those for wealthiest individuals?

Not at all. In terms of wealth, one can have wealth because he owns a company that has a big valuation or one can have wealth because of his investments. There is a difference between being an investor and being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur actively creates and an investor passively invests.

In all big companies, there are entrepreneurs and investors, and then there is the CEO – these three comprise the business. In small- and mid-sized businesses, the investor, the entrepreneur, and the CEO are often the same person.

What we should do is manage our business and create wealth. Beyond that, we should also work on social problems. It’s important that our talents and experience are utilized in addressing social problems because we have the training to work effectively with human and financial capital and to address complicated environments with different conditions. When we use our knowledge and experience to work on social problems, we can find solutions.

I believe that philanthropy is about more than writing a check. It is about giving your time, knowledge, commitment, and dedication; Mother Theresa gave her life for others – people like that are the real philanthropists.

The business community should get involved, not just in terms of monetary donations but with issue solutions. It’s about thinking through problems and giving your time and your talent to finding solutions. I don’t see it as a think tank, but rather like an action tank.

Do you reflect on how much you have achieved?

My challenge in life is not to just build a bigger business but also to help our country in terms of development.

An example of how a local problem can be addressed is a program we have had for 18 years called Social Justice. We take people out of jail who are there principally because they’re poor, not because of a crime they have committed. If they receive a small amount of money, they can get out of jail.

Many years ago, I recall a politician estimating that 20 percent of the people in jail were innocent. That is a big problem for society. While these people are in jail, they are basically attending a “university” of crime and in the end, not only is it expensive for the state to keep them there, but when they get out, they know more about criminality and are caught up in a bad cycle.

So we provide bail bonds to the government to get these unfortunate people, who are often our indigenous citizens, out of jail.

The difference between the U.S. and Mexico is that in Mexico, trials are held when the accused are jailed. In the U.S., you are judged prior to being sentenced to jail.

Our program takes 8,000 people out of jail each year. To get one of these people out of jail costs only $8 because of an agreement we made with a bail bond company. There are conditions that need to be met: the crime charged must be non-violent and the accused must be a first-time offender. Additionally, the decision of the judge also requires the accused to pay $500 to get out of jail.

Is slowing down just not in your nature?

In my opinion, we are doing 25 percent of what we could do. Maybe when we get to doing 95 percent, I will slow down. But my country is only at $10,000 per capita so we have a lot of poor people and we have not created the middle class that we need. A lot of people remain without education.

Technology has made things different today. When work was mainly of a physical nature, one would need to retire at 65. But with technological developments, people can continue to work and utilize their knowledge and experience without being limited by age.

In my case, my work is to think through problems and issues and find solutions.

We are living in a changed world. Society now moves at the speed of the Internet and technology can increase the speed with which change can happen.

When the economy declines, the big problem is that people don’t have jobs and lose hope. They can’t see how things will end up and they are unable to make any necessary changes. The things that governments do are to reduce expenses and increase taxes; this slows economic activity.

If we had a longer term vision, the government would have created budget surpluses when the economy was doing well so that it can spend and improve the economy when things are challenging. That’s the balance we need.•

Click Here to Download a PDF of A Conversation with Carlos Slim

See other features from LEADERS Magazine's October, November, December 2012 edition

• Shaping tomorrow
• Special reports
• The Banker blog
• Investment banking
• Retail banking
• Team of the month
• Transaction banking
• Emerging technologies
• Tech vision
• Transformation strategies
• Central banks
• Country finance
• Country reports
• Crypto assets
• Digital & data
• Risk management
• Better banking
• Climate risk
• Regulations & standards
• Asia-Pacific
• Central & eastern Europe
• Middle East
• Western Europe
• Bank of the Year Awards
• Central Banker of the Year
• Finance Minister of the Year
• Global Private Banking Awards
• Innovation in Digital Banking
• Investment Banking Awards
• Islamic Banking Awards
• Transaction Banking Awards
• Best-performing banks
• Top 1000 World Banks

Carlos Slim Helú

The son of a Lebanese immigrant with a passion for Bonsai trees, Mr Slim made his fortune in the 1990 privatisation of Telmex, Mexico’s state telephone monopoly. Since then, however, he has capitalised on Mexico’s central location in the Americas to build a business empire that cashes in on the wealth of the north and the growth potential of the south.

Through America Móvil, Telmex’s cell phone spin-off, Mr Slim is now the biggest mobile operator in Latin America, with 100 million subscribers. Forays into the US have had him holding substantial stakes in various US corporates, including MCI (he sold his 13% stake last year to Verizon), CompUSA and Saks Fifth Avenue.

To continue reading, join our community and benefit from

• In-depth coverage across key markets
• Comments from financial leaders and policymakers worldwide
• Regional/country bank rankings and awards

Why a Kamala Harris presidency won’t fast-track a US CBDC

Past enthusiasm for more efficient payment methods unlikely to translate into new impetus for digital currency

The Fed’s chair has signalled a rate cut is nigh, but how low will it go?

To predict what happens next, an understanding of the US labour market is essential

Brazil’s next central bank governor faces test of independence amid Lula clash

New governor expected to be nominated in coming weeks, before taking office in January

US Treasury criticised for ‘substantially’ underestimating new bank account compliance burden

American Bankers Association calls for reform of customer identification rules

Latest from Americas

Inflation Reduction Act’s promise for US clean energy projects sees mixed banking response

Two years on, The Banker looks into the IRA's impact on the industry

Trending in The Banker

Wise secures indian outbound remittances licence, crowdstrike outage renews focus on operational resilience, bangladesh protests highlight how remittances move to unofficial channels, the banker’s top 100 arab banks 2024, cover story: london dusts itself off and shines.

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

22. Carlos Slim Helu

Carlos Slim Helu was born on January 28 1940, in Mexico City. He is a Mexican business magnate, investor and philanthropist. From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked the richest person in the world by Forbes business magazine. He derived his fortune from extensive holdings in many Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso.

Click here to  subscribe to our print edition!

As of February 2020, according to Forbes’ listing of The World’s Billionaires, he is the fifth-richest person in the world. He and his family have a net worth estimated at $68.9 billion. He is the wealthiest person in Latin America.

His conglomerate includes education, health care, industrial manufacturing, transportation, real estate, media, energy, hospitality, entertainment, high-technology, retail, sports and financial services. He accounts for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange, while his net worth is equivalent to about 6 per cent of Mexico’s gross domestic product. As of 2016, he is the largest single shareholder of The New York Times Company.

Carlos Slim Helu married Soumaya Domit in 1967 until she died in 1999. Among her interests were various philanthropic projects. Slim has six children: Carlos, Marco Antonio, Patrick, Soumaya, Vanessa, and Johanna. His three older sons serve in critical positions in the companies controlled by Slim, where most are involved in the day-to-day running of Slim’s business empire.

Slim underwent heart surgery in 1999. In high school, Slim’s favourite subjects were history, cosmography, and mathematics. Slim and his wife had a very happy marriage, and he indicated that he did not intend to remarry.

Slim does not keep a computer in his office and prefers to keep all his financial data in hand-written notebooks. Due to the vast size of his business empire, he often jokes that he needs to keep track of all the companies he manages. Slim is a Maronite Catholic, one of the most well-known people who support the Legion of Christ, a Roman Catholic religious group.

On April 1, Her Majesty Queen Sophia of Spain granted the ‘Sophia Award for Excellence’ to the Mexican businessman and philanthropist Eng. Carlos Slim.

Sergio Perez’s ties to the Mexico-based Escudería Telmex racing team cover most of his three decades, stretching back to well before his days as a competitive driver. The relationship has afforded several opportunities to Formula One driver, who won his first race in the circuit last month before jumping to Red Bull.

Perez has spent 19 years under the tutelage of Carlos Slim Helu and Telmex, a partnership that continues to be a beacon for Mexican auto racing.

Related Articles

39. Carlos Slim Helú

16. Carlos Slim Helú

1. Carlos Slim Helu & family

My Fantasy F1 Team: Carlos Slim Domit

There are no comments, cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

H. Moser & Cie. Join Forces With Pierre Gasly 9.5

The Neo Bridges Aston Martin edition by Girard-Perregaux 9.6

Introducing J.Laverack Aston Martin .1R 9.7

The Tag Heuer Monaco Chronograph Racing Blue 9.8

Big Pilot’s Watch IWC Racing Works – a tribute to motorsports 9.3