Carlos Slim Helú
Carlos Slim Helú (born January 28, 1940) is a Mexican business magnate and
philanthropist who is currently ranked as the richest person in the world in
2012. Slim has been ranked the richest person in the world since 2010.
His extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through
his conglomerate, Grupo Carso, SA de CV, have amassed interests in the fields
of communications, technology, retailing, and finance. Presently he is the
chairman and chief executive of telecommunications companies Telmex and América
Móvil.
Early
life
Slim was born in Mexico City,
Mexico in 1940 to Maronite Christian parents Julián Slim Haddad and Linda Helú,
both of Lebanese descent. His father, born Khalil Slim Haddad, immigrated to
Mexico at the age of 14 in 1902 and changed his first name to Julián. As it
was not uncommon for Lebanese children to be sent abroad before they reached
the age of 15 to avoid being conscripted into the Ottoman army, four of
Haddad's older brothers were already living in Mexico at the time of his
arrival.
Carlos Slim's mother, Linda Helú,
was born in Parral, Chihuahua, of Lebanese parents who had immigrated to Mexico
in the late 19th century. Her parents upon immigrating to Mexico had founded
one of the first Arabic language magazines for the Lebanese-Mexican community,
using a printing press they had brought with them.
In 1911, Julián established a dry
goods store, La Estrella del Oriente (The Star of the Orient). By 1921, he had
purchased real estate in the flourishing commercial district of Mexico City.
These enterprises became the source of considerable wealth.
In August 1926, Julián Slim and
Linda Helú married. They had six children: Nour, Alma, Julián, José, Carlos and
Linda. Julián senior, who had been influential in the Lebanese-Mexican business
community, died in 1953.
Business career
Slim and his siblings were taught
basic business practices by their father, and at the age of 12, Slim bought
shares in a Mexican bank. At the age of 17, he earned 200 pesos a week working
for his father's company. He went on to study engineering at the National
Autonomous University of Mexico, while simultaneously teaching algebra and
linear programming there. In 1965 he incorporated Inversora Bursátil and then
bought Jarritos del Sur. In 1966, already worth US$40 million, he founded
Inmobiliaria Carso. Three months later he married Soumaya Domit Gemayel (the
Carso name derives from the first three letters of Carlo and the first two of
Soumaya) and they remained married until her death in 1999.
Construction, real estate and
mining businesses were the focus of his early career. By 1972 he had
established or acquired a further seven businesses in these categories,
including one which rented construction equipment. In 1976 he branched out by
buying a 60% interest in a printing business and in 1980 he consolidated his
business interests by forming Grupo Galas as the parent company of a
conglomerate that had interests in industry, construction, mining, retail, food
and tobacco.
In 1982 the Mexican economy,
which had substantially relied on oil exports, contracted rapidly as the price
of oil fell and interest rates rose worldwide. Banks and other businesses were
nationalized, crippled or collapsed and the peso was devalued.[citation needed]
At this time, and during the period of recovery to 1985, Slim invested heavily.
He bought outright, or a large percentage of, numerous Mexican businesses,
including Reynolds Aluminio, General Popo (General Tire's trading name in
Mexico), Bimex hotels and Sanborns, a food retailer. He also acquired a 40%
interest in the Mexican arms of British American Tobacco and 50% of that of
Hershey's. He moved into financial services as well, buying Seguros de México
and creating from it, along with other purchases such as Fianzas La Guardiana
and Casa de Bolsa Inbursa, the Grupo Financiero Inbursa. Many of these
acquisitions were financed by the cash flows from Cigatam, a tobacco business
which he bought early in the economic downturn.
He added the Nacrobre group of
companies – which trade in copper and aluminium products – in 1986, along with
a chemicals business, Química Fluor, and others.
In 1990 the Grupo Carso was
floated as a public company, with share placements initially in Mexico and then
worldwide.
Later in 1990 he acted in concert
with France Télécom and Southwestern Bell Corporation in order to buy landline
telephony company Telmex from the Mexican government. By 2006, 90 percent of
the telephone lines in Mexico are operated by Telmex, whilst his mobile telephony
company, Telcel, operates almost eighty percent of all the country's
cellphones. Telcel was created out of the Radiomóvil Dipsa company.
In 1991 he acquired Hoteles
Calinda (today, OSTAR Grupo Hotelero) and in 1993 increased his stakes in
General Tire and Grupo Aluminio to the point where he had a majority interest.
In 1996 Grupo Carso was split
into three companies – Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso, and Invercorporación
– and the following year Slim bought the Mexican arm of Sears Roebuck.
1999 saw Slim expanding his
business interests beyond Latin America. He set up Telmex USA and also acquired
a stake in Tracfone, a US cellular telephone company. At the same time he
established Carso Infraestructura y Construcción, S. A. (CICSA) as a part of the
Grupo Carso, this being a construction and engineering company. It was also at
this time that he had heart surgery and subsequently passed on much of the
day-to-day involvement in the businesses to his children and their spouses.
América Telecom, the holding
company for América Móvil was incorporated in 2000. It took stakes in various
cellular telephone companies outside Mexico, including the Brazilian ATL and
Telecom Americas concerns, Techtel in Argentina, and others in Guatemala and
Ecuador. In subsequent years there was further investment in this sphere,
including deals involving companies in Colombia, Nicaragua, Peru, Chile,
Honduras and El Salvador. 2000 also saw a venture with Microsoft which led to
the start of the Spanish T1msn portal, later renamed ProdigyMSN.
He formed Impulsora del
Desarrollo y el Empleo en America Latina SAB de CV (IDEAL – roughly translated
as "Promoter of Development and Employment in Latin America"), a
Mexico-based company primarily engaged in not-for-profit infrastructure development.
This was in 2005, when he also invested in the Volaris airline.
Having amassed a 50.1% stake in
Cigatam, the tobacco company, Slim reduced his holdings by selling a large part
of that to Philip Morris in 2007 for $1.1bn, while in the same year also
selling his entire interest in a tile company, Porcelanite, for $800m. He also
licensed the Saks name and opened Saks Fifth Avenue in Santa Fe, Mexico. The
following year saw him take a 6.4% stake in The New York Times Company.
On December 8, 2007, Grupo Carso
announced that the remaining 103 CompUSA stores would be either liquidated or
sold, bringing an end to the struggling company as it was then known, although
the brand continues. After 28 years he became the Honorary Lifetime Chairman of
the business. He is also Chairman of Teléfonos de Mexico, América Móvil, and
Grupo Financiero Inbursa.
Personal fortune
On March 29, 2007, Slim surpassed
Warren Buffett as the world's second richest person with an estimated net worth
of $53.1 billion compared to Buffet's $52.4 billion.
On August 4, 2007, The Wall
Street Journal ran a cover story profiling Slim. The article said, "While
the market value of his stake in publicly traded companies could decline at any
time, at the moment he is probably wealthier than Bill Gates". According
to The Wall Street Journal, Slim credits part of his ability to "discover
investment opportunities" early to the writings of his friend, futurist
author Alvin Toffler.
On August 8, 2007, Fortune
reported that Slim had overtaken Gates as the world's richest man. Slim's
estimated fortune soared to $59 billion, based on the value of his public
holdings at the end of July. Gates' net worth was estimated to be at least $58 billion.
On March 5, 2008, Forbes ranked
Slim as the world's second-richest person, behind Warren Buffett and ahead of
Bill Gates.
On March 11, 2009, Forbes ranked
Slim as the world's third-richest person, behind Gates and Buffett and ahead of
Lawrence Ellison.
On March 10, 2010, Forbes once
again reported that Slim had overtaken Gates as the world's richest man, with a
net worth of $53.5 billion. At the time, Gates and Buffett had a net worth of
$53 billion and $47 billion respectively. He was the first Mexican to top the
list. It was the first time in 16 years that the person on top of the list was
not from the United States. It was also the first time the person at the top of
the list was from an "emerging economy."
In March 2011, Forbes stated that
Slim had maintained his position as the wealthiest person in the world, with
his fortune estimated at $74 billion.
Philanthropy
In 1995 he established Fundación
Telmex, a broad-ranging philanthropic foundation. This followed the creation of
his eponymous non-profit philanthropic foundation, Fundación Carlos Slim Helú
in 1986. In 2007 Slim announced that the latter body had been provided with an
asset base of $4 billion and that it would be establishing Carso Institutes for
Health, Sports and Education. Furthermore, it was to work in support of an
initiative of Bill Clinton to aid the people of Latin America. Because Mexican
foundations are not required to publish their financial information, it is not
possible to confirm Slim’s claims of charitable giving through a public source.
Among the activities of Fundación
Telmex has been the organisation of Copa Telmex, an amateur sports tournament
which in 2007 was recognised by Guinness World Records as having the most
participants of any such tournament in the world, a record which it extended in
2008. Together with Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, this organisation announced in
the same year that it was to invest more than $250 million in Mexican sports
programmes, from grass-roots level to Olympic standard.
The Fundación Carlos Slim Helú
sponsors the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City which contains the world's
second-largest (and largest private) collection of Rodin sculptures, including
The Kiss. Named after Slim's late wife, Soumaya Domit, the Museo Soumaya holds
66,000 pieces, including religious relics, works by Leonardo Da Vinci, Pablo
Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and coins from the viceroys of Spain. In
particular, the museum holds the largest Dalí collection in Latin America.
In 2000, Slim, along with
ex-broadcaster Jacobo Zabludowsky organized the Fundación del Centro Histórico
de la Ciudad de México A.C. (Mexico City Historic Downtown Foundation), with
the objective to revitalizing and rescuing Mexico City's historic downtown area
to enable more people to live, work and find entertainment there.He has been
Chairman of the Executive Committee for the Restoration of the Historic
Jeripollas since 2001.
In 2010 he inaugurated the first
phase of the Plaza Mariana project in the Basilica de Guadalupe to reorganize
tolerated commerce in the atrium and adjacent space.[citation needed] He also
inaugurated his version of the Rockefeller Center where most of his ventures
will now share a common headquarters address, Plaza Carso.
In May 2011, Slim was mentioned
in Forbes' World's Biggest Givers after donating $4 billion to his foundation.
Achievements
Slim has been vice-president of
the Mexican Stock Exchange and president of the Mexican Association of
Brokerage Houses. He was the first president of the Latin-American Committee of
the New York Stock Exchange Administration Council, and was in office from 1996
through 1998.
Slim was on the Board of
Directors of the Altria Group (previously known as Philip Morris) until his
resignation in April 2006. Slim was also on the Board of Directors of Alcatel.
Slim currently sits on the Board of Directors for Philip Morris International.
He was on the Board of Directors of SBC Communications until July 2004, when he
quit to devote more time to the World Education & Development Fund, which
is focused on infrastructure, health and education projects. In 1997, just
before the company introduced its iMac line, Slim bought 3% of Apple Inc.'s
stock.
In 2008 it was reported that Slim
had shown an interest in buying the Honda Formula One team. Telmex is sponsoring
the Sauber F1 team for the 2011 season.
Praise and criticism
The Mexican magnate's growing
fortune has caused a controversy because it has been amassed in a developing
country where per capita income does not surpass $14,500 a year, and nearly 17%
of the population lives in poverty. Critics claim that Slim is a monopolist,
pointing to Telmex's control of 90% of the Mexican landline telephone market.
Slim's wealth is the equivalent of roughly 5% of Mexico's annual economic
output. Telmex, of which 49.1% is owned by Slim and his family, charges among
the highest usage fees in the world, according to the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development.
According to Professor Celso
Garrido, an economist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Slim's
domination of Mexico's conglomerates prevents the growth of smaller companies,
resulting in a shortage of paying jobs and forcing many Mexicans to seek better
lives in the United States of America.
Slim has stated, "When you
live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about
how I'll be remembered," claiming indifference about his position on
Forbes list of the worlds richest people and has said he has no interest in
becoming the world's richest person. When asked to explain his sudden increase
in wealth at a press conference soon after Forbes annual rankings were
published, he reportedly said, "The stock market goes up ... and
down", and noted that his fortune could quickly drop.
Personal life
Slim was married to Soumaya Domit
from 1967 until her death in 1999. Among her interests were various
philanthropic projects, including the creation of a legal framework for organ
donation. Slim has six children: Carlos, Marco Antonio, Patrick, Soumaya,
Vanessa, and Johanna.
dikutip dari: http://en.wikipedia.org
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