Carlos Slim Helu was born on 26 January 1940, in Mexico City Mexico, to Maronite Christian parents of Lebanese descent. Carlos is a Mexican investor, business magnate and philantropist, best known for being a self-made billionaire with his major interest being in the telecom business. So successful has he become, that Forbes magazine rates Carlos Slim as the second or third richest person in the world in 2015.
One may wonder, just how rich is Carlos Slim? Not surprisingly, being an extremly smart and therefore influential businessman, Carlos Slim’s net worth is estimated to be an impressive $72 billion. The primary source of Carlos’ wealth comes from the telecomunications industry in Mexico and Latin America, as he owns the biggest and most widely spread companies such as Telefonos De Mexico, TelCel, and América Móvil that are currently run by his three sons. In addition to his communications business, Carlos Slim holds investments in the fields of technology, retailing, and finance that generate large sums of money flowing into his account.
Carlos Slim Helu Net Worth $64.8 Billion
Carlos Slim and his brothers were taught business practices from the earliest days by their father, and he first purchased Mexican government savings bond at the age of 11 years, then bank shares, which helped his financial education by teaching him the value of compound interest; at 17 he was already working in his father’s company. However, Carlos also attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico where he studied civil engineering, before starting in his realised career as a businessman, initially as a stock trader in Mexico to hone his investment skills. In 1965, just four years after graduating, windfall profits from Slim’s private investments reached $400,000 ($3 million today), giving him enough working capital to start his own stock brokerage firm, Inversora Bursátil; not a bad start to Carlos’ net worth.
Slim subsequently went on to buying and investing in companies that ranged from mining and retail, to food (Sanborns), tobacco (British American Tobacco), customer service (Bimex hotels) and financial services (Grupo Financiero Inbursa). In 2000, Slim acquired América Telecom, the holding company for América Móvil, that had cellular phone stakes in Brazilian ATL, Telecom Americas, and Techtel in Argentina, and later expanded into companies in Colombia, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. ( In 2010, Carlos Slim earned the remarkable sum of $49 billion from his company América Móvil alone, which significantly increased his overall net worth.)
Slim later bought a Volaris airline among many other purchases. In 2007 sold his Cigatam tobacco company to Philip Morris for $1.1 billion, and built a headquarters titled Plaza Carso in Mexican City. In 2012, Slim along with Larry King established an on-demand television network Ora TV that distributes various television shows. In 2014, Slim made his first European purchase as he took hold of Telekom Austria, a company that provides fixed-line, mobile, data and internet services, with subsidiaries in seven central, as well as eastern European countries such as Austria, Bulgaria, Macedonia and others.
Apart from his many successful acquisitions and remarkable net worth, Carlos Slim has received a number of awards, including “Gold Patron” of the American Academy of Achievement, CEO of the year in 2003 and CEO of the decade in 2004 by Latin Trade magazine, and in 2012 an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from George Washington University.
However, despite his many achievements, Carlos Slim Helu is a very modest and humble person. Slim currently lives in a six-bedroom house near his office, is not interested in sophisticated and impressive yachts, planes or cars, but instead lives a simple and ordinary life. Carlos married Soumaya Domit in 1967; regretfully she passed away in 1999. The couple has six children, who are involved in their father’s businesses. Interestingly, Slim refuses to use a computer, but continues the system he was taught by his father in keeping all his financial data in hand-written notebooks.
