The story of Carlos Slim Helu, the richest man in the world, is interesting primarily because he achieved the height of his position through his work, perseverance, knowledge, faith and desire for victory.
His example is instructive primarily because of how important the love of work and financial education instilled by his parents played in his life.
What is the secret of success of the richest man in the world? What needs to be done to achieve such heights? What skills and qualities do you need to develop in yourself in order to ascend to the pedestal of wealth and fame?
Let's try to figure it out together...
Carlos Slim Helu was born on January 28, 1940 in Mexico City. In his family of Christian immigrants from Lebanon, Carlos was the fourth of five children.
Carlos's father arrived in Mexico from Lebanon at the age of 14. He spoke absolutely no Spanish and was completely alone, but he was full of enthusiasm and energy, as well as many ideas that he wanted to bring to life.
Nine years later, in 1911, Don Julian Slim, the father of the future richest man in the world, together with his older brother founded the company La Estrella de Oriente, which means “Star of the East,” which sold groceries.
It must be admitted that Carlos's father Slim Helu was a very talented and successful businessman. In just 10 years of his business, he not only made it very profitable, but with the money he earned he was able to purchase 11 units of commercial real estate in the very center of Mexico City, the most active and significant part of the city.
First million earned
Carlos' father had business acumen. In his new place, he started the real estate business. Then, in 1920, Julian purchased real estate in downtown Mexico City and opened a supermarket here. This man managed to found a successful trading business in Mexico City, in which all six of his children began working. From them he demanded diligence, talent and devotion. In return, the children received large pocket money, which they had to learn to manage from the first grade of school. Carlos had good business sense. The teenager, with the blessing of his father, began to engage in stock investing, the rules of which he mastered at the age of seventeen. It was then that Carlos Slim earned his first million.
Father's science as a start on the path to success
Carlos Slim Helu became the fourth of 5 children of Lebanese refugees Julian (Julian) Slim Haddad and Doña Linda Helu. He was born on January 28, 1940 in Mexico , where his parents moved because of the head of the family. Julian was threatened with conscription into the Ottoman army, so in 1902 he emigrated from Lebanon. His wife, the daughter of a successful merchant, did not leave her husband, devoting herself to family and raising children.
Having settled in Mexico, Julián went into real estate business. Long before Carlos was born, he changed his occupation and began selling groceries. Things went well, and soon the business became a family affair. Julian Slim involved all the heirs in the work, demanding diligence and discipline from them.
For their work, the children received pocket money: 5 pesos per day. Their father forced them to record their income and expenses, then analyze the data and calculate the benefits. Using practical examples, the whole family analyzed the activities of various companies in America and Europe, the reasons for their successes and failures. Even then, young Carlos learned to understand the role of investments and savings. Julian Slim died when the boy turned 13. However, he managed to teach his son a lot: to calculate situations, to always be ahead of events.
Since childhood, Carlos has learned that family values are one of the main priorities in life, which inspires him to achieve his goals. There is no time to be lazy, you need to take it and do it. His father's lessons were not in vain and gave impetus to the development of the abilities of the future billionaire. Fascinated by stock investing, at the age of 12 Carlos began implementing his first project. The teenager opened a bank account in which funds were accumulated to purchase shares in a bank of Mexico. Perseverance and business acumen allowed Slim El to earn his first million at the age of 17.
Interesting fact. Like most boys of that age, Carlos spent his pocket money on sweets and soda. This did not prevent him from subsequently learning how to manage finances. The children's accounting records are still kept in the tycoon's office.
Personal life
In 1966, Carlos married Somaya Domit Germayel. This girl was also of Lebanese descent. She was the cousin of Gemayel, the Lebanese president. The couple were happily married for 32 years, until Somaiya's death in 1999. Today, Slim is considered, despite his extra pounds, double chin and advanced age, to be an eligible bachelor. However, he is indifferent to beauties, and glamorous fame does not appeal to him.
Foundation of the famous holding
The country defaulted in 1982 due to the inability to pay off its external debt. A large-scale economic crisis occurred in Mexico. For a few centimes, investors got rid of the substantial assets they had accumulated. Carlos Slim, whose biography is the topic of our article, took advantage of the panic situation. He used the money left over from his father and bought many promising companies for next to nothing. It was then that the famous investment holding Carso Group was founded. This name is made up of the first syllables of the names of Carlos and Somaya, his wife.
Expansion into various market sectors
The next step was the mining of coal and ore. The Frisco Corporation, which is still part of the Group Carso syndicate, has become a leader in the country's mining and chemical industries.
The expansion of companies owned by Carlos into various sectors of the market by the end of the 1980s had reached such a scale that every second resident of the country, as well as every second enterprise, in one way or another encountered every day at least one of the many structures owned by this millionaire, being consumers the goods and services it produces.
Political assets
Carlos Slim, whose fortune was already very large at that time, in addition to economic assets, also acquired political ones. His contacts with high-ranking Mexican officials are informal and friendly. Among them, the most valuable was the friendship with Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the president of this country in 1988-1994. Slim's ill-wishers argue that the personal sympathies of the Mexican president allegedly played to the millionaire's advantage when the question arose of the privatization of the state telecommunications company Telmex, which at that time, and for many years later, was a monopolist in the Mexican communications services market.
Acquisition of Telmex
De Gortari, who pursued a tough course on the privatization of state-owned enterprises and deregulation of the economy, decided to send a number of companies to auction, including Telmex. A group of investors, led by Carlos Slim Helu, won the tender. Slim paid for the stake he received for several years with money from the proceeds that the acquired company received. Carlos, by investing in politics, secured the support of the Mexican government for his business for many years.
The shocking fact of the acquisition of Telmex caused outrage in society, a storm of indignation in government circles and in the press. It led to a whole series of mass proceedings. The process ended in nothing, but all this time the president was forced to explain himself to the public and the government.
Master of Telecommunications
In the early 90s, Carlos Slim significantly increased his capital. Mexico privatizes its telecommunications industry, and acquires Telmex from the Mexican government. Then there was a major deal with the acquisition of a controlling stake from. Gradually, Grupo Carso is gaining momentum, and from a company known only to Latin America is growing into a global brand. The further chronology of events is also impressive:
- 1991 Acquisition of Hoteles Calinda, which eventually became the Ostar Grupo Hotelero holding company.
- 1993 Increases its portfolio with large shares in General Tire and Grupo Aluminio.
- 1996 Slim's company is divided into three large holdings: Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso and Invercorporación.
- 1997 Becomes the owner of the largest industrial productions: Procter & Gamble Co., Apizaco, Pampys. The successful acquisition of all three companies costs Slim $170 million.
Work at Telmex
Meanwhile, Carlos Slim Helu continued to build a financial empire. His biography during these years is marked by the fact that he directed all his efforts to work in the acquired company. It took him five years to put it in order: to rebuild the technical base, streamline corporate governance, and create a range of services. These efforts were not in vain - the reconstruction, carried out over five years, allowed the company in 1995 to avoid a national disaster that devalued the Mexican peso. Telmex, thus, met the new stage of development of the Mexican industry not as a decrepit company with government protection, but by acting as the leader of the country's economy and as the main supplier of telecommunications services.
Telmex enjoyed a monopoly in the Mexican market throughout the 1990s. The company even now occupies about 80-90 percent of the country's fixed-line market, as well as about 70% of the mobile market.
Elu goes beyond Mexico
At the beginning of 2000, Carlos Helu decided that it was time to enter the international market. The first step for this was the publicity of Grupo Carso, that is, now anyone could buy shares of the company and become its shareholder.
First of all, Carlos Helu is betting on mobile operators in Latin America, so the main part of the corporation’s assets at that time were shares in the financial company Inbursa, as well as in the consortium of Latin American mobile operators America Movil
Over the next seven years, Elu bought telecommunications companies in El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Honduras and Argentina.
In 2008, he set his sights on business in the USA. There he bought assets in The New York Times and Citibank. The strategy was similar to the one that Elu used in the 80s in his native Mexico: buy assets during a crisis, but this time he sold them, only the companies were doing well.
New companies within the holding and new cooperation
In 1996, the Group Carso syndicate was spun off into a holding company called Carso Global Telecom. The main task was to coordinate the technical, organizational and financial resources of the Elu group. Subsequently, the holding included the Condumex company, which produces telecommunications equipment, as well as Prodigy, the first provider in Mexico, and also a pioneer of commercial web activities.
Carlos Slim invested $1.5 billion in 1999 to control several American firms that operate cellular telephone centers and fiber optic networks in Puerto Rico and Florida.
Together with SBC, in February 2000, he became a co-owner of Network Access Solutions, a well-known Internet provider. Cooperation with Microsoft made it possible to triple the number of Internet users, which led to an increase in sales of computer equipment.
Biography
Childhood
Our hero was born in 1940 in Mexico City into a Maronite family. His father, Julio Slim Haddad, migrated from Lebanon in 1902 to avoid serving in the army. He married the daughter of a wealthy Lebanese merchant and opened his own business, providing real estate services, and later a supermarket in a prestigious area of Mexico City. From childhood, he taught all his six children, of whom Elu was the penultimate, entrepreneurship, passing on his knowledge and skills.
As first-graders, the children worked hard for their father, receiving a salary that they learned to manage. They budgeted and planned expenses in a notebook that their father had specially given to them. Among the others, Carlos was distinguished by the fact that he had a business sense, although he spent everything he earned on candy, soda and other sweets. But by the age of 12, I decided to start investing. He opened an account specifically for stocks and purchased the assets of Banco Nacional de Mexico. And at the age of 17 he was able to earn his first million.
Having entered the National Autonomous University of Mexico as an engineer, he continued to engage in stock trading, managing to teach algebra and linear programming as a student. After graduating from university in 1961, he did not want to work in his specialty, and five years later he founded his own real estate agency. Calling Inmobiliaria Carso, creating an acronym from the initials of his name and his beloved wife (Sumai Domit Gemayel). Having accumulated a considerable fortune , Elu began to acquire various hotels and shops, focusing on ensuring that even poor Mexican residents could afford the goods necessary for life.
Prosperity and success
Crisis in Mexico
In 1982, Mexico experienced an economic crisis due to the inability to pay off accumulated foreign debt. And while Mexican investors in panic sold off their assets en masse, Carlos was not at a loss and acquired most of them for pennies, adding part of the capital inherited from his father. This is how the Carso Group holding, known throughout the world today, was born. He further became interested in the chemical, mining and metallurgical industries.
Literally by the end of the eighties, almost every resident of his country encountered at least one of Elu’s branches of business every day. By the way, it was during this period that he developed friendly relations with the President of Mexico, Carlos Salinasi de Gortari, which provided him with connections in the field of politics, which only added to his power and status. It was these relationships that played a decisive role in relation to the purchase of Telmex, a telecommunications company, since it was Slim who won the competition among other investors.
Monopoly
The real value of Telmex was at least $12 billion. Al managed to conclude a deal with a very large discount - the amount was $400 million. Moreover, he paid for it over several years, taking the so-called installments. The President of Mexico City has been reporting to the government and, in general, to the residents of the country for a long time. But apparently, the deal between the Carlos was very promising and successful. Because both of them didn't pay much attention to the fact that their reputations were a little tarnished due to this event.
During these years (1990 -2011) he was able to achieve an absolute monopoly in the telecommunications sector, also acquiring part of the assets of such companies as The New York Times, CaixaBank, America Movil, etc.
In just 10 years, he managed, despite the crisis and poverty of the Mexicans, to quadruple the number of Telmex clients. Which until the 2000s amounted to approximately 30 million users, thanks to the fact that it provided a loan for the purchase of a cell phone, and a good discount on the starter package. This helped even the poorest citizens of Mexico City to always be in touch. The success story of the telecommunications company gave him the idea that it was worth organizing a separate holding company for it, with the main emphasis on further promotion. This is how Carso Global Telecom was born in 1996.
No. 1 in the world
In 2002, Forbes magazine included him for the first time in its list of the richest people on the planet with a net worth of $11 billion. And literally in 8 years, approximately $43 billion more was added to his fortune, which ensured him the title of the first rich man on the planet. In 2011, he decided to relieve himself of leadership of his empire, leaving only a seat on the board of directors of the investment company Impulsora. Despite this, his income is growing rapidly, and as of 2021 his capital amounted to $86 billion. Today there is no exact data on how much money he has, but it is known that he was replaced from the first positions by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, along with Mark Zuckerberg, according to Forbes magazine. But he is still rightfully considered the most influential person in Mexico.
Family
Slim tied the knot with Sumai in 1966. They were happy together for 32 years, until trouble happened - their beloved died in 1999. Together they gave birth to six beautiful children, 3 sons and 3 daughters. The eldest son, Carlos Domit, is now chairman of his father's holding company, while the others run America Movil and Grupo Financiero Inbursa. Slim claims that parents usually want to do everything to provide their children with a happy life, but he has a different principle - to teach them so that they can do it on their own and at the level at which they want.
From childhood, Elu grew up in an atmosphere where the most important value in a person’s life is family. Therefore, he raised his children in the spirit of previous traditions. He even once said in an interview that each person should work no more than three days a week in order to devote the remaining four to loved ones, for whom it is worth living and giving their all. His devotion to his wife earned him the title of the most desirable widower in all of Mexico City.
Unlike many famous and rich men, he is not at all enamored with models and other glamorous young ladies. Carlos prefers to spend his free time on the coast of his country not in the company of beauties, but with his children and grandchildren. By the way, there is a museum that he created and named after his beloved wife “Sumai”.
Character
Hobbies
In addition to his family, Elu loves baseball. So much so that it can tell about the statistics, rankings and results of any athlete from any tournament. The players themselves probably don’t remember such details. But for some reason he owns three football clubs, and not baseball teams. He also loves art, collecting works by Picasso and Van Gogh, as well as works by Rodin. He is interested in history, and really likes to “dig” dossiers on every famous or familiar person.
That is, before meeting with someone, the entire biography of the interlocutor will be studied, and not a single smallest detail will be left unattended. Carlos lives by the principle “forewarned is forearmed,” thanks to which he has so many useful and necessary connections. By the way, although his sons once gave him a laptop for Christmas, he doesn’t use it at all, preferring to keep all the information in his head, trusting only his memory.
Economical
In the business world, he is known as a very economical and thrifty person. You won’t believe it, but despite his billions, at important business meetings, when he shakes hands, what becomes noticeable is not a Rolex watch worthy of a tycoon, but an old battery-powered one, remember, they used to have those with a built-in calculator? And, in principle, he lives not in the coolest mansion, but in the house where his family has lived for several decades.
Slim is not embarrassed by the usual plastic lighters that are sold at every gas station; he calmly lights his favorite cigars with them. But what can we say if his office is not on the top floor of a skyscraper, but in a basement where there is not a single window. And he teaches this philosophy to his employees, saying that even in the simplest and most successful years a person is obliged to save, restraining impulses of extravagance. Then, in the event of a crisis or any other trouble, he will be able to stay afloat, maintaining balance and stability.
For a long time, Slim was considered a stingy man, due to the fact that in a country where poverty reigns, he gets rich and refuses to help the vulnerable population. He explained his refusal to do charity quite logically, declaring that he was not Santa Claus to fulfill someone’s wishes. Despite his condition, he will not eradicate poverty in any way, because the problem itself is in people and their attitude towards money. And if you compare wealth with a garden, then you need to share the fruits, and not the trees, emphasizing that those who are unable to earn money will waste the gift and return to their previous lack of money. Therefore, instead of deductions, he built schools and tried to create as many jobs as possible so that people themselves would be able to provide for themselves without relying on someone else.
Charity
But after the death of his beloved, he reconsidered his values and created his own institute to combat cancer and diabetes, which he called the Carlos Slim Institute of Health. And after he was diagnosed with heart problems, Slim completely changed his tactics. He deposited about $4 billion into charitable foundations. Having explained the changes, after death he still will not be able to enjoy his wealth, taking it with him.
He is also the main sponsor of the Nicholas Negroponte program, which consists of donating a laptop to every child. And Slim contributed approximately $100 million to the Bill Clinton Foundation, the 42nd President of the United States, who is concerned about the poverty of Latin Americans.
By the way, freely handling such large sums, our tycoon still carefully keeps in his office his first notebook, with the help of which he began his acquaintance with finance.
Carlos Slim today
The mirror of Mexican evolution is Carlos Slim Helu. This is an entrepreneur who uses connections in the government apparatus, but is far from the ideals of free competition and an open market. On the other hand, this is, of course, a talented person who is aimed not only at acquisitiveness, but also at creation. Telmex, after all, not only collected all the profits and benefits of the monopolist. Under Slim's leadership, over the first ten years the company modernized its networks and quadrupled the number of subscribers. From the late 1990s and over the next ten years, 30 million Mexicans - low-income people - gained access to mobile communications.
Real estate
Where does Carlos Slim live and what does he own? The home of the Mexican billionaire is located in Lomas de Chapultepec, one of the most prestigious areas of modern Mexico City. The modest home, built forty years ago, is located near the place where Carlos spent his childhood and youth.
In addition, over the years he acquired:
- the former New York Times building on West 43rd Street;
- 11-story building on First Avenue in New York;
- 10-story building at the corner of Wilshere and Santa Monica Boulevard;
- two mansions in Detroit;
- mansion on 5th Avenue in New York, with a total area of 20 thousand square meters.
Carlos's main real estate is located in the United States of America. In May 2014, K. Slim presented to the world community his own aquarium, Inbursa, the largest in Latin America.
