Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim Can Buy Your Soul. And Steal Your Heart.
7 November 2007, 11:30 AM. By Alex Alvarez
Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim, who stole Bill Gates’ thunder this summer like a mustachio’d bandit in the night to become the world’s richest man, is historically publicity-shy. But recently, he’s taken to courting the media. Pretty hot right? We like a man who could play Monopoly with, like, actual trains and properties and people’s souls:
Slim has been widely accused of monopolistic practices; he catapulted himself to the top spot on the back of his company Teléfonos de México, or Telmex, which has a 92 percent stranglehold on his country’s local fixed-line market. [...] In all, Slim’s net worth is equivalent to a stunning 6.6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), easily eclipsing Gates (0.4 percent of U.S. GDP) and even John D. Rockefeller at his peak (slightly less than 2 percent in 1937).
Yeah, we’d rock his fellers. (High five!) But, wait. Maybe its wrong to love a man for his money! Maybe there’s something to be said about a person’s character, his beliefs, his world view. Hmm. We wonder what having Slim’s kind of money does to a man:
Recently, Slim has behaved a bit bashfully, like a man who knows he is not popular. Described by some who have met him as disarming, austere, and even humble, he seems to be aware that much of the world isn’t exactly thrilled to have an alleged monopolist in the No.1 spot. Long scornful of charity—he once criticized Gates and others for acting like Santa Claus because they gave away too much money—Slim recently announced plans that will make him one of the world’s leading philanthropists.
Ok, Slim Shady.
To that end, Slim only this year has given up a long habit of cultivating anonymity. He has even begun talking regularly to the press. [...] When Slim granted an interview to USA Today in April, he made the reporter promise he would deliver to his editors an “improved” baseball box score design that Slim had specially created for the newspaper’s sports pages.
Rich and wading in a solid gold jacuzzi of crazy? Le swoon.
How Slim Got Huge [Foreign Policy]
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Codo.
Where is his foundation? Huh? He could learn alot from Kermit d’Frog, I mean Bill Gates.
Anybody want to buy one of his high rise condos next to the linea in TJ? You could probably paraglide from the rooftop into the US!
Lebanese-Mexican!
@ Marco: And? He’s still codo.
@nanita: Here’s “the group of foundations he has stakes in.”:http://www.carlosslim.com/responsabilidad.html Among his tackier philanthropic moves has been “giving out bicycles to poor kids with his company’s logo on them.”http://www.carlosslim.com/images/fund_tmx02g.jpg It’s not as if Telmex’s stranglehold on the Mexican phone industry is ubiquitous enough.
to be fair to rockefeller, he ALSO SINGLE HANDEDLY INVENTED THE ENTIRE OIL INDUSTRY. Did Carlos Slim invent the telephone? I think not.
If Mexican government didn’t run PEMEX, he’d own that shit too!
I wish there were 10 more Slims in Mexico… It would be a totally different country!!! I wouldnt mind letting Slim and his people control Pemex for a while… Im sure the company would be 10 times in size in the same number of years…