How Mexico Billionaire Carlos Slim Built His Fortune Jesse Emspak - Investopedia.com
go to original April 6, 2015

Mexico's Carlos Slim is the world's second-richest person (Informador)

Imagine if the grocery store, the cell phone provider, and biggest national construction outfit were all owned by the same company – you could buy just about anything and never have to enrich any competitors. That's very nearly the situation in Mexico, where one of the world's top-three richest people, Carlos Slim Helú, resides.

How he amassed his wealth – north of $70 billion, according to the Forbes list - is a study in both business acumen and political connections.

First, what do people mean when they say he's so rich? Slim (obviously) doesn't have all those billions sitting in a vault a la Scrooge McDuck. It's a measure of his total holdings in various companies as well as his "real" assets. That said, Slim has a sizeable piece of many companies that he owns. For example, the Slim family owns, via a trust, 65% of the capital of telecom América Movil, perhaps the biggest pieces of the Slim empire. Slim himself owns some 8% of the company, according to its website.

Slim has a hand in literally hundreds of other companies, largely through Grupo Carso. Grupo Carso has stakes in enterprises as diverse as Elementia, one of the largest cement companies in Mexico, a hand in retail (via Sears), energy and construction (via CICSA) and automotive (via Grupo Condumex). He has a sizable stake in Saks Fifth Avenue, and even bought 17% of the New York Times.

Perhaps the biggest piece of Slim's wealth comes from telecommunications. Via Grupo Carso and a family trust, as well as his own personal shareholdings, Slim is the owner of América Movil, formerly Teléfonos de Mexico, or Telmex.

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