Carlos Slim

Carlos Slim Helú is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist whose interests span telecommunications, retail, construction, finance, and media. Through his conglomerate Grupo Carso and the telecommunications group América Móvil, he became one of the wealthiest people in the world, and for several years in the early 2010s he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person globally.

Early life

Slim was born in Mexico City in 1940 to parents of Lebanese descent; his father, Julián Slim Haddad, was a merchant who built a successful retail and real estate business. The younger Slim showed an early interest in finance and investing, reportedly buying shares and keeping financial ledgers as a boy. He studied civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he also taught algebra and linear programming, before moving fully into business and investment.

Career

In the 1960s and 1970s Slim accumulated stakes in a range of Mexican companies, often acquiring undervalued or distressed firms and restructuring them. He consolidated many of these holdings under Grupo Carso. A defining moment came in 1990, when a consortium led by Slim acquired a controlling interest in Teléfonos de México (Telmex), the recently privatized national telephone company. Telmex became the cornerstone of his fortune and the platform for further expansion across Latin America.

The mobile operator América Móvil, spun out and grown from these telecom assets, expanded aggressively across Mexico and into numerous countries in the Americas, becoming one of the largest wireless carriers in the region. Slim's broader portfolio came to include retailing (Grupo Sanborns), construction and infrastructure, mining, financial services, and stakes in companies abroad. He has held a significant investment in The New York Times Company, becoming one of its largest shareholders.

Wealth and philanthropy

Slim's dominance of Mexican telecommunications has drawn scrutiny from regulators and critics who have argued that limited competition contributed to high prices, leading to regulatory reforms intended to increase competition in the sector. His business style is often described as frugal and long-term oriented, favoring reinvestment over conspicuous consumption.

Through the Fundación Carlos Slim and related institutions, he has funded programs in health, education, employment, and digital access, as well as cultural initiatives. He founded the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, named after his late wife Soumaya Domit, which houses a large private art collection and is open to the public free of charge. He has also supported initiatives in sports, infrastructure, and historic preservation in Mexico.

Now in his later years, Slim has gradually shifted day-to-day management of parts of his empire to his children while remaining an influential figure in Mexican and global business. He is frequently cited in discussions of wealth concentration, emerging-market investing, and the development of Latin America's telecommunications industry, and he continues to appear among the top names on global rich lists.