World's Richest Man Inflated by Mexico's Most-Expensive Stocks Jonathan Levin - Bloomberg News
go to original March 23, 2013

Carlos Slim is clinging to his title as the world’s richest person thanks to stakes in the priciest publicly traded companies in his native Mexico, even as his biggest holding plummets in value.

While Slim, 73, is best known as the majority owner of embattled wireless carrier America Movil SAB, his banking, mining and construction companies are so expensive that if they aligned with industry averages, he would relinquish the mantle to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

The Mexican billionaire’s bank, Grupo Financiero Inbursa SAB, is trading at 26.1 times trailing earnings, the highest among five publicly-traded Mexican lenders, whose average valuation is 20.2 times earnings, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. His gold mining and construction companies each top peer valuations by at least as much.

“Some of his holdings have valuations that don’t reflect reality,” Carlos Fritsch, strategist and president of Prognosis, Economia, Finanzas e Inversiones SC, said in a telephone interview from Mexico City. Inbursa is “the difference between him and Bill Gates. With that alone he would cease to be in first place.”

Slim has a net worth of $69.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is $1.5 billion ahead of the 57-year-old Gates.

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