Personality: the richest people are low-key
This year's 67-year-old Slim although the last name Slim (slim), but his wealth is quite fat. A Mexican financial news Web site recently reported that, as Slim's Mobile Communications Corporation of the Americas share price from March to June this year rose 27 percent, at the end of the second quarter of this year, Slim's family property has reached 67.8 billion. That figure equals 8 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product and exceeds the $59.2 billion in assets of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Pictures of Telecom Carlos Slim, Mexico's Richest Man in the New World He Surpasses Gates
In April of this year, Forbes Magazine reported that Slim had supplanted Warren Buffett as the world's second-richest man. At the time, Garcia, the founder of the Mexican online financial magazine Common Sense, argued that Slim had actually surpassed Bill Gates in wealth, just by a slim margin. Now, Garcia argues, Slim is already unquestionably richer than Gates.
But the news shouldn't dismay Gates. Since he was first named the world's richest man by Forbes magazine 13 years ago, Gates' status as the richest man has been unassailable. Gates was once asked if you would be upset if one day you were no longer the richest man in the world. In response, Gates replied lightly: "No, there is nothing good about being the richest. The richest man gets too much attention."
Like Gates, Slim keeps a low profile. His spokesman said Slim is not concerned about the rankings.
Path to fortune: talent revealed as a youngster
Gates didn't have to wait too long to realize his vision. Similarly, Slim showed his talent for investing as a teenager. The scion of Lebanese immigrants made his first investment at age 11 - buying government savings bonds. By the time he was 15, he was a shareholder in Mexico's largest bank.
Slim graduated from the Civil Engineering Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1962. Afterward, he worked as a teacher for a while, but he quit soon afterward, knowing that his real interest remained in business.
For Slim, his father was the mentor who led him into the business world. Slim's father, Julian, was born in Lebanon and left home for Mexico as a teenager. He first opened a dry-goods store in the Mexican capital, and during the hard times of the siege of Mexico City, Julian made a bold decision: he bought a property in the center of the city. This gamble-risky act later proved to be a wise one. Upon his death, he left Slim a handsome inheritance.
It was from his father that Slim learned the ropes of business. "My father told me that no matter how bad the crisis was, Mexico would not be finished. If I had faith in this country, any proper investment would eventually pay off."
In 1982, an economic crisis hit Mexico, devaluing the currency and causing everyone to pull out of their investments and shift their capital to the United States and Europe. In the case of Mexico's economic outlook is not optimistic, Slim made the same decision as his father that year: at a low price to buy a number of tobacco companies and restaurant chains on the verge of bankruptcy. A few years later, the assets of these companies increased dramatically, laying a solid foundation for his path to riches.
Of course, this was just the beginning, and Slim's bigger opportunity came in 1990. In a wave of privatization of state-owned companies in Mexico, Slim took advantage of the opportunity to buy the Mexican telephone company. When he took over the phone company, it was extremely inefficient, taking months or even years to install a phone line, and had a bad reputation in the industry.
However, Slim succeeded in transforming it into a modern, professional conglomerate. Today, Slim controls 90 percent of Mexico's telephone lines. Relying on this money tree, Slim gradually established his own huge industrial empire, step by step from Mexico's richest man to become Latin America's richest man, until now the world's richest man. Slim's way of making a living is to buy out companies that are struggling at low prices and then turn them into profits.
Ambition: bigger appetite than Gates
Gates' life goal is to build a computer world, and most of his energy is focused on the computer and software industry. And Slim clearly has a bigger appetite than Gates. Unwilling to settle for the status quo, his ambitions pushed him to expand into broader areas. In Mexico, he is involved in almost everywhere, Mexico is like a "kingdom of Slim".
Every morning, Mexicans wake up to the sound of their cell phone alarms, and the cell phone service they use is provided by Slim; they go out and drive to work, and the tires on the car are bought in a store run by Slim, and the steel used in the construction of the road infrastructure is produced by Slim's company; at noon, they may eat in a restaurant run by Slim. At night, when they return home and turn on the TV, Mexicans watch the news broadcast by Slim's TV station; on the Internet, they use the network provided by Slim's company. Slim's investment areas include Latin America's largest mobile communications companies, banks, agents, insurance, Internet business, restaurants, retail, electronics, oil facilities, steel, cement, and even airlines. It has been said that Slim makes money every minute, and that Slim gets richer whenever someone in Mexico makes a phone call or a trip to a shopping center.
In addition, Slim is a very traditional man. In his private life, he kept his distance from much modern technology. Slim has never been interested in computers; Slim's family had given him a laptop for Christmas in 1999, but he laughed and said he only knew how to press the on button.
Life attitude: pushing thrift
Many world-class tycoons are passionate about philanthropy, and Gates is a prime example of this, having created the world's largest charitable foundation. After years of accumulating wealth, Slim began to devote himself to charity. Starting this year, Slim handed over more power to his three sons and three sons-in-law. He says he will focus his energies on philanthropy.
Frugality seems to be the ****ing same virtue for two of the world's richest men. Gates, who has been the world's richest man for 13 years, does not have his own personal chauffeur and has never traveled by chartered plane. When traveling on official business, he did not sit in first class but sat in economy class. He attended the meeting, refused to sit in a high-class car, only ordinary car. He is not particular about what he wears, does not go for designer labels and loves to buy discounted products.
Like Gates, Slim's life is quite frugal despite his wealth. For clothing, food, housing and dressing, Elou is not elaborate. He lives in a house smaller than the one he lived in as a child, and the one he uses for weekend vacations has been in use for decades. He always wears a cheap plastic watch and often wears baggy clothes.
While his company is the richest in Mexico, for decades his office has been a dirt-brown, two-story concrete building submerged in the skyscrapers of Mexico City. His only luxuries are smoking Cuban cigars and collecting art.
Slim's family life has always been low-key; at 26, he married Somaya and began their more than 30-year marriage; Somaya died of kidney disease in 1999, and Slim has never remarried.