Carlos Slim Helu

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carlos Slim Helú (2007)

Carlos Slim Helú (born January 28, 1940 in Mexico City ) is a Mexican entrepreneur in the telecommunications industry (including Telmex and América Móvil ). According to estimates by the Mexican financial magazine Sentido Común , he had assets of 67.8 billion US dollars in 2007 , making him the richest person in the world. After Forbes Magazine ranked it in third place in 2009 with US $ 35 billion, it was ranked number one again in 2010 with US $ 53.5 billion and in 2011 with US $ 74.0 billion. The differences in the asset data are mainly based on revaluations in the wake of the ongoing financial crisis . As of August 2014, his net worth was approximately $ 81.6 billion.

On the Forbes 2019 list , his net worth is estimated at approximately $ 64 billion. He is currently number 5 on the list of the richest people in the world. He's also the richest man in Mexico, according to Forbes .

family

His father, Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz, was a Maronite Christian from Jezzine 70 km south of Beirut in Lebanon , who fled to Mexico in 1902 at the age of 14 and called himself Julian Slim Haddad in his new home. He went ashore with his two older brothers in Tampico harbor and settled in Mexico City. There, in 1911, Julián Slim Haddad opened a shop called La Estrella del Oriente ( The Star of the Orient ) and made a small fortune that he used to buy real estate in Mexico City. The properties were cheap to buy during the Pancho Villa revolution and turned out to be a good investment.

Julián Slim Haddad married Linda Helú, the daughter of another wealthy Lebanese merchant family, and had six children with her, of which Carlos Slim Helú was the fifth. Carlos Slim Helú describes his father, in whose business he has been helping since he was eight, as his most important teacher in management , sales and finance . Julián Slim Haddad died in 1952, leaving his family behind his fortune, which Carlos Slim Helú used as a foundation for his career as an investor.

Carlos Slim Helú was married to Soumaya Domit, who died in 1999. The marriage resulted in three sons who now play important roles in the day-to-day business of Slim's group of companies. Carlos Slim Domit (* 1967) is currently (2009) CEO of both Telmex and Grupo Carso , an industrial and commercial conglomerate.

education

Carlos Slim Helú studied civil engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and graduated as an engineer in 1961. Even before he graduated, he was teaching algebra and linear optimization at UNAM . He has also given lectures and seminars at public and private organizations, including institutions of the Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).

Corporate empire

Since the 1980s, Slim built up his corporate empire Grupo Carso . Among other things, he acquired a tobacco store chain, the pharmacy, restaurant and gift store chain Sanborns , the Mexican part of the US retail chain Sears and Condumex , a manufacturer of auto parts. In addition, he made important connections in the political life of Mexico.

Telmex logo

When President Carlos Salinas privatized the state-owned telephone company Telmex in 1990 , a consortium led by Slim (including SBC Communications and France Télécom ) won the bid and paid a very reasonable price of 1.8 billion US dollars. The company was valued at around $ 10 to $ 12 billion. Telephone costs then rose dramatically in Mexico without any significant improvement in the quality of the network. The Mexican long-distance call market is still not consistently open to other providers, the prices are among the highest in the world. Critics believe that the privatization of Telmex, like many other privatizations under Salinas, was based on corruption . For critics of globalization, Telmex is the prime example of a failed privatization that has led to a monopoly .

Telmex is now by far the largest private company in Mexico and dominates the Mexican Stock Exchange , of which Slim was for a time Vice President. The company was able to hold its own against foreign competition and continued to expand by investing in Latin America, particularly in the cellular sector, which is operated by subsidiary América Móvil .

In recent years, Slim and his group have increasingly invested in the United States. They acquired shares in Philip Morris (now Altria Group ), OfficeMax and Saks, among others . Since the late 1990s, Slim has also owned a small portion of the shares of Apple and other US companies. Slim is also one of the major shareholders in the television company Televisa . In September 2008, he acquired 6.4% of the New York Times Company. In January 2009, Slim increased its stake with a $ 250 million loan that, when due in 2015, included an option to purchase an additional 11 percent of the stake at an advantageous price. Three years before the loan was due, the publishing house repaid the loan with interest and early repayment penalty in 2011. Slim exercised his option to purchase 15.9 million A shares at a price of $ 101 million in 2015. As a result, he is now the owner of 16.8% of the publishing house.

In June 2012, the Mexican telecommunications company América Móvil acquired 23% of the shares in Telekom Austria from investor Ronny Pecik and increased its stake to around 51% in July 2014. As of December 31, 2014, America Movil directly and indirectly holds 59.7% of the shares, Österreichische Bundes- und Industriebeteiligungen GmbH (ÖBIB) holds 28.42% and the remaining 11.88% are in free float. At the same time, Carlos Slim also made additional acquisitions for his second investment in Europe, the Dutch KPN . América Móvil's share in the Dutch KPN was 29.8% in June 2012.

According to the business magazine Forbes, the companies of the holding companies of Slim's family accounted for more than 5 percent of total Mexican economic output in 2006.

criticism

Slim has been criticized for accumulating his wealth in a developing country, where the average income per capita does not exceed $ 14,500 and 17% of the population live in poverty. Slim's wealth equates to around 5% of Mexico's annual economic output. His company Telmex acts as a monopoly that controls 90% of the Mexican fixed line market. According to the OECD , the usage fees charged by Telmex are among the highest in the world.

According to Celso Garrido, an economist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México , the market power of Slim's companies is preventing the growth of smaller companies, creating a job shortage that is partly responsible for emigration from Mexico.

Patronage

The 100 dollar laptop

In 2000, Carlos Slim Helú organized the establishment of a foundation to save and revitalize the historic old town of Mexico City. He has been chairman of the committee for the renovation of the historic center since 2001.

In 2007 Slim published a plan to give away hundreds of thousands of laptops from the One Laptop per Child project to children in Mexico. To this end, he planned to invest 70 million US dollars in 250,000 laptops in 2007 and purchase another 500,000 laptops in 2008. He ordered 50,000 pieces. Slim assumes an average price of $ 250 to $ 300 per laptop. The devices will initially be distributed to schools and libraries.

In 2011 Slim opened a new museum in his hometown of Mexico City to display his enormous art collection valued at around 700 million US dollars. The museum itself is said to have cost about 34 million US dollars.

He supports the controversial conservative order of the Legionaries of Christ and was even married by its criminal founder and pederast Marcial Maciel . This Roman Catholic congregation is under surveillance by the Holy See because of its financial entanglements, among other things.

Others

Carlos Slim's fortune rose to an estimated 67.8 billion US dollars by the Mexican magazine Sentido Común , primarily due to the price increases in his stakes in companies listed in Mexico , making him the richest man in the world for at least one year. He replaced Bill Gates, who had been leading for years, as the richest man in the world. In its The World's Billionaires list , Forbes Magazine ranked Slim as the second richest person in the world with a net worth of $ 77.1 billion in 2015, only surpassed by Bill Gates.

He is also a leader for the Latin American Development Fund , where he focuses on investments in infrastructure , healthcare and education . He is an opponent of free trade efforts and market opening regulations for developing countries.

Carlos Slim Helú has a vacation home in San Bernardino on Lago Ypacarai in Paraguay .

In December 2008 Slim was traded as a possible buyer of the former Honda factory team in Formula 1. He was spotted at the plant on the 23rd of the month, and four days later it was unofficially leaked that Slim would take over the team, with the guarantee of funding the team with $ 400 million annually for at least the next three years. At the end of December 2008, the Telmex group denied such negotiations. Slim supported the young driver Bruno Senna (nephew Ayrton Sennas ), who would have been promoted to Formula 1 with it.

On November 17, 2012 Slim acquired 35 percent of the Spanish football club Real Oviedo for two million euros .

literature

Web links

Commons : Carlos Slim Helú  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Carlos Slim Helú  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The World's Billionaires on Forbes.com March 10, 2010 (English)
  2. ↑ The World's Billionaires on Forbes.com March 10, 2011 (English)
  3. ↑ Current profile Forbes: Carlos Slim Helu & family
  4. ↑ Billionaires 2019. Accessed July 29, 2019 .
  5. ^ Carlos Slim Helu & family. Retrieved July 29, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b Klaus Ehringfeld: "Carlos Slim, the unknown billionaire" , Handelsblatt , March 13, 2007, p. 13
  7. ^ Graham Gori: Mexicans Seen Waiting Some More for a Phone. In: The New York Times, January 24, 2001
  8. ↑ Renaud Lambert: The Owner of Mexico. How Carlos Slim became the richest man in the world with the help of the state. In: Le Monde diplomatique . dated June 13, 2008
    "Surfing the Internet costs 260 percent more at his companies than in neighboring countries, calls in the mobile network 312 percent more than elsewhere, and the fixed network is also 65 percent more expensive."
  9. ↑ Julia Preston: "Mexico's Telephone Revolution" , New York Times, November 14, 1996
    "Although no evidence has emerged, many Mexicans suspect that Mr. Salinas secretly profited from the sale of Telmex."
  10. ↑ Spiegel Online : "Mexican billionaire joins" New York Times " , September 11, 2008
  11. ↑ Eric Dash, “Mexican Billionaire Invests in Times Company,” New York Times, Jan. 19, 2009
  12. ↑ N-tv: Slim is now the largest shareholder Loyalty to the "New York Times": Slim is now the largest shareholder - n-tv.de , January 15, 2015
  13. ↑ Carlos Slim increases Telekom stake ( Memento of March 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), March 12, 2013, Wirtschaftsblatt , accessed on April 13, 2013
  14. ↑ Telekom Austria: Pecik no longer holds any shares. Investor Ronny Pecik has transferred the remaining 16 percent of his stake in the Mexican America Movil of billionaire Carlos Slim , September 25, 2011, Die Presse , accessed on April 13, 2013.
  15. ↑ Investor Ronny Pecik joins Telekom Austria. Goal: 20 percent of the shares - Egyptian billionaire on board , from September 9, 2011, Austria Presse Agentur , accessed on April 13, 2013.
  16. ↑ Carlos Slim joins Telekom Austria on a large scale , June 15, 2012, Handelsblatt , accessed on April 13, 2013.
  17. ↑ UN HDI table . United Nations. 2008. Retrieved May 27, 2009.
  18. ↑ Helen Coster: Carlos Slim Helu Now World's Second-Richest Man . In: Forbes , April 11, 2007. Retrieved May 27, 2009. 
  19. ^ Geri Smith: Slim's Big Giveaway: As the government steps up its scrutiny, the billionaire is stepping up his philanthropy . In: BusinessWeek , March 5, 2007. Retrieved May 27, 2009. 
  20. ^ Andy Porras: Mexico's wealthiest mogul spurs controversy . In: Hispanic Link . July 13, 2007. Archived from the original on March 15, 2011. Retrieved on May 27, 2009.
  21. ↑ Mark Stevenson (AP): Mexican billionaire gives away laptops to children on GameStar.de , August 5, 2007.
  22. ↑ Peru Orders 260K OLPCs, Mexico to Get 50K on Slashdot August 4, 2007 (English)
  23. ↑ The Super Museum of the super-rich , Spiegel Online February 20 2011th
  24. ↑ Article in Welt online from March 10, 2011.
  25. ↑ Article in Zeit online from March 10, 2011.
  26. ↑ Article by Verlagsgruppe Bistumspresse from September 23, 2011.
  27. ↑ ORF .at: I'm not Santa Claus , July 3, 2007
  28. ↑ Carlos Slim Helú at Forbes.com
  29. ↑ "Motorsport Formula 1: Honda rescue moved a long way off" , Handelsblatt, December 29, 2008
  30. ↑ Tycoon Slim invests in troubled Spanish team Real Oviedo ( Memento of November 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 17, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Slim Helu, Carlos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican entrepreneur in the telecommunications industry
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Mexico city