Carlos Slim Biography & Net Worth

Carlos Slim Biography & Net Worth

Carlos Slim is a Mexican billionaire investor and leading philanthropist. He has been listed as the world’s richest man for several years in a row by Forbes magazine. This article will examine his businesses and current financial data, as well as other important information such as his personal life, family, and accomplishments.

At the present time, Carlos Slim owns more than 200 businesses across a wide variety of industries. He learned crucial business practices from his own father when he was a young boy, and also worked in the business of his family during his teenage years. After he completed his college studies, Carlos started making investments in earnest and gradually began building an empire of conglomerates and corporations; both established and purchased by him. Today, he has holdings in South American and international companies, in businesses ranging from construction and manufacturing to tobacco, and dry goods. His most famous and dominant holdings include his near absolute monopoly over the Mexican mobile phone market which at a point, provided more than 80% of the mobile services in use in the country.

A huge part of Carlos’ vast wealth goes to many different philanthropic projects, aimed at protecting culture and the arts, providing dependable and affordable health care, preserving the environment, and many other humanitarian causes. He permanently serves as the honorary chairman of his parent company, ‘Grupo Carso’. However, after undergoing a heart surgery, many of the day-to-day responsibilities in the business has been relinquished to his children.

Carlos Slim’s Biography & Career

Carlos Slim Helú was born in Mexico City, Mexico, on January 28, 1940. He was one of the six children born to parents of Lebanese descent. His father ran a successful dry goods business and this meant that he taught Slim and his siblings the scope of doing business from the time they were young. By the time he was only 12 years of age, Carlos had purchased shares in a Mexican bank. Though his father passed away in 1953, Carlos continued to carryout activities in his business until he turned 17.

He studied civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and also taught linear programming and algebra while at school.

As soon as he completed his studies and graduated from school, Carlos Slim moved straight into business without wasting any time. It was in the 1960s that he started building a fortune for himself by becoming a stock trader. In 1965, he gathered all the money that he had been saving and opened the stockbrokerage firm Inversora Bursatil. He also acquired the Jarritos del Sur, which is worth about $40 million.

In the 1970s Slim ventured into multiple businesses and established groups of companies in various industries such as soft drink, airlines, mining, real estate, construction, paper and packaging, financial services, cement, tobacco, telecommunications, hotels, retail, mineral extraction and several others under the umbrella company Grupo Carso.

In the 1980s, the Mexican economy faced difficulties at alarming levels, and several companies struggled as well. However, this instability was profitable for Slim as he made a kill by acquiring these troubled assets at a very low price and later resold them at a profit. This is a business strategy that he has been using even up to this day. His portfolio of companies subsequently expanded to retail stores, mining companies, tobacco company, equipment company, real estate, and others.

He has also generated an incredible fortune by investing in several companies. As a smart investor, he invested companies and establishments like Telmex telephone company, Compania Hulera Euzkadi, The Hershey Company, Seguros de Mexico, Empresas Frisco, British American Tobacco, among others. He invested in everything in his country Mexico until there was nothing left to invest in, so he decided to invest overseas. He has invested in foreign companies like Ora TV, Telekom Austria, Microsoft, CompUSA, OfficeMax, New York Times Company, Cigatam tobacco venture, and many other companies.

Awards & Achievements

A man of his caliber with such unmatched business acumen can only be honored with the highest of merits and honorary degrees from governments and higher institutions. Some of the prestigious awards and medals he has received so far in his lifetime include: the Entrepreneurial Merit Medal of Honor received from Mexico’s Chamber of Commerce in 1985, Commander of the Belgian Order of Leopold II, chief executive officer of the decade in 2003 and in 2004 by Latin Trade magazine, The National Order of Cedar by the Lebanese government, and an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from Washington University.

Personal Life & Family

Carlos Slim is a father of six children, all born through his wife Soumaya Domit who unfortunately met her demise in 1999.

The billionaire industrialist is a Catholic and ensures to keep all his financial records written in notebooks rather than on computer systems, for reasons best known to him.

Carlos Slim Net Worth

Mr. Slim has always been considered as one of the wealthiest people in the world. He has led the ranks for many years and continues to rotate the top five positions with the emergence of many other billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Waltons and many others. Carlos Slim net worth is approximately $65 billion as at the time of this writing. He is one of the ten richest men in the world right now after topping the list for many years as the very first person to clock $90 billion mark.

His wealth, as reflected on his huge net worth figures, has been generated through his extensive holdings in many companies both in Mexico and foreign nations under his Conglomerate Grupo Carso, which includes financial services, mining, real estate, sports, retail, hotels, energy, media, healthcare, high technology, construction, and so many more. This billionaire can comfortably fund the GDP of several small countries of the world. He bravely expanded his investments and dived in deeper into several business aspects after being mentored by his own father, and can today, look back at his journey and be proud of himself for making all those smart moves and taking the risks that were involved to get to this position.