CARLOS SLIM

NEWSMAKER-Carlos Slim, Mexican tycoon with long tentacles
Reuters, 04.30.04, 3:13 PM ET


By Chris Aspin

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - He could own a squadron of private jets and a fleet of yachts, but Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, Latin America's richest man, prefers to save his money -- and keep it in the family. Slim, 64, who passed the helm of Mexico's leading telephone company Telmex to his son Thursday, is an amateur history buff who is renowned for his Midas business touch. It is hard to spend a day in Mexico without putting peso's into Slim's pockets, so wide and varied are his holdings.

Handing the chairmanship of Telmex to his son is one element of a well thought out succession plan to hand over his business empire to his family. There is no hint that Slim is walking away as he will remain Telmex's owner.

In a typically shrewd move, Slim and his partners bought Telmex from the government for $1.7 billion in 1990. The purchase catapulted Slim into the big business league and he has never looked back. Telmex will ring up more than $10 billion in sales this year and, dauntingly for competitors, has just embarked on a rapid expansion in South America.

Notoriously frugal but also an avid collector of Auguste Rodin sculptures, Slim's businesses are an estimated treasure trove worth $14 billion. Besides most of Mexico's fixed and mobile phone lines, he owns cake shops, department stores, record stores, restaurants, a bank, and other companies that make everything from cigarettes and floor and kitchen tiles to car parts.

A son of a Lebanese immigrant, Slim began on the road to becoming the biggest business tycoon in Latin America when he was 10, selling soft drinks and candies to his own family. Slim studied engineering and entered the formal business world at 25, partnering with a university friend to form Carso real estate company. He also worked as a trader in the Mexican stock exchange, taking buy and sell orders on the floor.

Insiders say his business gameplan has always been simple: Buy a struggling company on the cheap and turn it around, a strategy he followed in the 1970s. More opportunities came in 1982 when Mexico was in a crisis, and companies were available at fire sale prices.

And then came his acquisition of the former state monopoly Telmex, his crowning moment. His Telmex acquisition was not so much a tale of buying a struggling company, but buying huge growth potential. Slim was allowed to run the former monopoly without competition for seven years. "He is a super saver, he always has the same suit. he's totally centered on business," said Celso Garrido, a professor at the UAM university who has studied the gray-bearded Slim and his business history.

In another typically astute move, Telmex has started to extend into South America. The company's growth potential in Mexico had started to wane, so Slim looked south to expand.