Carlos Slim Helú, (born January 28, 1940, Mexico City, Mexico),

Mexican entrepreneur who became one of the wealthiest people in the

world. His extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican
companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso, SA de CV, amassed
interests in the fields of communications, insurance, construction,
energy, mining, retailing, publishing, and finance.
Slim was born into a family of Lebanese Christian immigrants to Mexico,
where his father made a fortune in real estate during the Mexican
Revolution of 1910–20. Slim graduated with a degree in engineering from
the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and by the mid-1960s he
was investing in and founding a variety of businesses that became the
foundation for Grupo Carso. He attained billionaire status in the aftermath
of the economic crash of 1982, when the Mexican
government, defaulting on foreign debts in light of a devalued peso,
began nationalizing banks and scaring away business investors. Having
purchased at bargain prices controlling interests in a variety of
companies, Slim managed them so effectively that within the span of a
decade their aggregatevalue soared.
For more than a dozen years, Slim’s key holding and the anchor of his
success was his ownership of the former national
telephone monopoly, Teléfonos de México (Telmex), which allowed him
to broaden his investment portfolio into
American technology and telecommunications firms such as Prodigy Inc.
and SBC Communications Inc. Grupo Carso also held extensive interests
in numerous Mexican companies. By the late 1980s Slim had forged
close ties with Pres. Carlos Salinas de Gortariand the ruling Institutional
Revolutionary Party. In 1990 the Gortari administration privatized Telmex,
and Slim, along with SBC and France Télécom, made the $1.76 billion
purchase. Slim later won management control of Telmex, alienating
France Télécom but keeping close relations with SBC. His tight control of
Telmex upset his competitors, as well as some consumers critical of the
communications giant. The mobile-telephone division of Telmex, América
Móvil, became a separate company in 2001 and enjoyed several years of
spectacular growth, eventually becoming one of the largest
telecommunications companies in the world. América Móvil purchased its
former parent in 2011.
Slim acquired the ailing electronics products and services
company CompUSA in 2000. After realizing that he had misjudged his
ability to turn the company around—a rare misstep for Slim—he sold it in
2007. By the following year Slim had become the largest shareholder in
the New York TimesCompany, the financial conglomerate Citigroup, the
luxury retailer Saks, and the consumer electronics retailer Circuit City. In
2017 América Móvil announced that it would launch a new Spanish-
language television network, Nuestra Vision, aimed at a Mexican-
American audience.
A noted art collector and philanthropist, Slim founded (1994) a not-for-
profit art museum, Museo Soumaya (named for his wife), in Mexico City.
In 2011 the museum moved to a larger building in the city. The new anvil-
shaped structure—designed by Fernando Romero, Slim’s son-in-law—
featured a facade covered in aluminum hexagons, and the interior offered
183,000 square feet (17,000 square metres) of exhibition space. Slim was
also prominent in the revitalization of the historic centre of Mexico City,
establishing (2000) the Foundation for the Historic Centre of Mexico City,
and he received the Hadrian Award from the World Monuments Fund in
2004 for his efforts in preserving culturally significant buildings in Mexico
City. Slim also received several awards for his philanthropic efforts, which
included establishment of the Carlos Slim Foundation, focusing on the
areas of health, sports, and education through such organizations as the
Carlos Slim Institute of Health, which funds research projects on public
health in Mexico. In 2009 the Carlos Slim Foundation partnered with
Grameen Trust—a nonprofit venture of Grameen Bank, the Bangladeshi
bank founded by economist Muhammad Yunus as a means of providing
small loans to poor individuals—to launch the Grameen-
Carso microcredit program in Mexico.
In 2015–16 Slim publicly criticized Republican U.S. presidential
candidate Donald J. Trump for making allegedly racist comments about
Mexican immigrants to the United States, for proposing to build a wall
along the U.S.-Mexico border, and for threatening to withdraw the United
States from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Following an unexpected meeting between the two men in December
2016 (by which time Trump had become president-elect), Slim restated
his view that investment and economic development in Mexico would
prevent unwanted immigration much more effectively than a physical wall.