Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim’s fortune has passed the $100 billion mark for the first time, according to Bloomberg. At $101.5 billion, Slim and his family are ranked as the 11th wealthiest people in the world by Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He built his fortune from his extensive holdings in various Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso.
Slim, whose Lebanese parents emigrated to Mexico in 1902, has been successful in making bullish bets on the country in times of crises. He was one of the biggest beneficiaries of Mexico’s wide-ranging privatization drive in the late 1980s and 1990s. Slim bought Telmex, the beleaguered state-owned telephone company in 1990, and grew it into the multinational América Móvil (NYSE: AMX), which served roughly 300 million wireless subscribers in 22 countries and posted revenue of nearly $41 billion at the end of 2022, according to Inside Towers Intelligence.
Recognizing the potential of the emerging telecom market in Mexico and Latin America, Slim invested heavily in expanding and modernizing the network, offering affordable and quality services to millions of customers. He also diversified into other telecom segments including mobile, internet, and pay-TV, and entered new markets in the U.S., Europe, and Africa. To wit, in November, América Móvil boosted its majority stake in Telekom Austria AG to 58 percent, Inside Towers reported.
While telecom accounts for the majority of Slim’s wealth, he has other investments in banking, media, energy, real estate, and sports. Today, he owns stakes in companies such as The New York Times, CaixaBank, a Spanish multinational financial services company, and Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction conglomerate.
Now, the third generation of the Slim family is involved in overseeing companies in Grupo Carso’s portfolio and has begun to take executive positions and board seats. His granddaughter Vanessa Hajj Slim sits on the boards of América Móvil and Grupo Carso.
As a philanthropist, Slim has donated billions of dollars to various causes in education, health, culture, and the environment through the Carlos Slim Foundation, the Telmex Foundation, and the Slim Initiative in Health.
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