Carlos Slim

Carlos Slim Helú built a fortune by buying when others were afraid to. He bought Mexican companies cheaply during a national crisis, won the country’s telephone monopoly when it was privatised, and turned it into the largest mobile phone company in Latin America. From 2010 to 2013 Forbes ranked him the richest person in the world.

A Lebanese Shopkeeper’s Son

He was born on 28 January 1940 in Mexico City. His father, Julián Slim Haddad, had emigrated from Lebanon to Mexico in 1902 as a teenager, to avoid conscription into the Ottoman army. He built a dry-goods shop in central Mexico City, La Estrella de Oriente, and during the Mexican Revolution bought property cheaply in the city centre, when others were leaving. His mother, Linda Helú, was also of Lebanese descent.

His father gave each of his children a savings book and made them record every peso they received and spent, and review the accounts with him. Carlos kept doing it. He bought his first shares, in a Mexican bank, at about twelve. His father died when Carlos was thirteen.

The Engineer

He studied civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and while still a student taught algebra and linear programming there. He later said that engineering taught him to think in numbers and structures.

In 1965 he set up a stockbroking firm, Inversora Bursátil, and began investing in property, a bottling company and a construction business. In 1967 he married Soumaya Domit, also of Lebanese descent. They had six children. In 1980 he brought his businesses together as Grupo Carso, from the first letters of Carlos and Soumaya.

Buying in the Crash

In August 1982 Mexico announced that it could not pay its foreign debts. The peso collapsed, the government nationalised the banks, and foreign and Mexican investors rushed to get their money out of the country. Shares in Mexican companies fell to a fraction of their value.

Slim did the opposite. He bought. Over the next few years Grupo Carso acquired stakes in, or control of, a range of companies at very low prices, including the tobacco company Cigatam, the Sanborns chain of shops and restaurants, and an insurance company. He has said simply that he was betting on Mexico — that the country would recover and the companies would regain their value. It did, and they did.

Telmex

In 1990, as part of a wave of privatisations, the Mexican government sold control of Teléfonos de México (Telmex), the national phone company. A consortium led by Grupo Carso, with the American company Southwestern Bell and France Télécom, won with a bid of about $1.76 billion.

Telmex came with a virtual monopoly on fixed-line phones in Mexico for several years. Slim invested heavily in modernising the network, but Telmex also charged some of the highest prices in the developed world. Critics, including the OECD in a 2012 report, argued that his dominance had cost Mexican consumers and businesses many billions of dollars a year. Slim and his companies rejected that view, pointing to the investment they had made.

América Móvil

Telmex’s mobile business, Telcel, grew quickly. In 2000 Slim spun it off, along with other mobile operations, as América Móvil. Under the brand Claro it expanded across Latin America, from Brazil and Colombia to Argentina and Central America, and into parts of Europe through a stake in Telekom Austria. It became the largest mobile phone company in Latin America by customers.

His fortune grew with it. In 2007 some estimates put him ahead of Bill Gates, and from 2010 to 2013 Forbes ranked him the richest person in the world — the first time in years that the title had gone to someone from outside the United States.

Beyond Mexico

He also made investments abroad. In 2009, during the financial crisis, he lent The New York Times $250 million, and later became its largest shareholder, before reducing his stake. He bought stakes in companies in Spain and the United States and a Spanish football club, Real Oviedo.

In 2026 his companies announced plans to invest about $5 billion in Mexico, and Grupo Carso increased its stake in the Zama offshore oil field. Forbes estimated his fortune at a record high that year.

Family and Giving

Soumaya Domit died in 1999 of kidney disease. He never remarried. In 2011 he opened the Museo Soumaya, named after her, in a striking building in Mexico City, with free admission. It holds one of the largest private collections of works by Auguste Rodin outside France.

His sons, Carlos Slim Domit, Marco Antonio Slim Domit and Patrick Slim Domit, run the main family companies, and his sons-in-law hold senior positions. Through the Fundación Carlos Slim he has funded health, education and the restoration of Mexico City’s historic centre. He is known for relatively simple personal habits, and for decades lived in the same house in Mexico City.

The Method

Slim’s approach to business is well documented, because he has explained it often. He buys companies when they are cheap, often in difficult times; he cuts costs and bureaucracy hard; and he reinvests the profits rather than spending them. He has said that money that leaves a company evaporates, and that wealth is like an orchard: you take the fruit, not the trees.

He applied it across very different businesses. Grupo Carso expanded in retail, buying the Mexican operations of Sears in 1997, and in construction, mining and industry. Grupo Financiero Inbursa grew out of his original stockbroking firm into one of Mexico’s larger financial groups.

Regulation

His dominance of Mexico’s telephone market eventually brought a political response. A 2013 constitutional reform created a stronger telecoms regulator, and in 2014 América Móvil was declared the “preponderant” operator, subject to special rules intended to open the market to competitors, such as sharing its network and ending some charges. América Móvil responded by selling some assets and growing further outside Mexico, especially in Brazil.

He is a keen baseball fan and has written about the statistics of the game, and he has spoken publicly in favour of a shorter working week for older workers, arguing that people should work later in life but fewer days a week.

Across the Continent

Telmex and América Móvil expanded by buying operators across Latin America when their owners wanted to sell. In 2004 Telmex bought a controlling stake in Embratel, Brazil’s long-distance and data carrier, and América Móvil built Claro into one of Brazil’s largest mobile operators. It later bought control of Telekom Austria, giving it a foothold in central and eastern Europe.

Slim has handed much of the day-to-day running of his businesses to his sons and sons-in-law, while remaining closely involved. He has said that he wants his children to run the companies as a team rather than divide them.

His fortune is closely tied to Mexico’s economy, and he has been a vocal promoter of investment in the country’s infrastructure, education and technology.

The measure of him is the crisis of 1982. When a country’s own investors were fleeing it, he bought, because he believed that Mexico would outlast its crisis. That bet, and the telephone company that followed, made him one of the richest people in history — and one of the most debated.

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