Under the radar, on top of your world: people you should know about.

If you haven’t heard of Carlos Slim Helú, odds are you don’t take our brown brother to the south seriously when it comes to business. Slim is the Mexican tycoon and alleged monopolist that’s second only to Microsoft demi-god Bill Gates on the Forbes wealthiest list, and is predicted to overtake ol’ four eyes soon. A primer on the world’s most powerful beaner:

• The multi-billionaire founded his empire on the profits of Latin America’s largest cellphone company, then expanded into the land-line business before taking over a plethora of stuff like retail, cigarettes, and railroads. (Oh, my!)
• If you’ve set foot in Mexico over the past decade, the man’s hand has dipped into your wallet.

• Slim upped the endowment doled out by his companies’ foundations from $4 billion to $10 billion three months ago, spread out over the next four years.
• Slim got his backwoods surname from his Jordanian father, and earned his riches by buying failed companies at bargain rates before turning their losses into profits.
• Riffing on that old Chinese proverb about feeding a hungry man, Slim proposed a solution to the poor man’s dilemma in today’s New York Times:

Instead of giving him the fish, instead of teaching him how to fish, you have to teach him how to sell the fish so that he eats something else besides a fish.

Who says poor Latinos want fish? They clearly enjoy the finer things in life, as evidenced by the fact that cuy ain’t going nowhere. Then again, we don’t mind waiting at the Mexican gravy train stop for instructions on how to market fish from a guy who’s ripped people off for billions at a time. Of course, we would prefer a hand-out…
New Commitment to Charity By Mexican Phone Tycoon [NY Times]
Image [Patricia Domínguez / EFE]