Carlos Helu. The success story of Carlos Slim Elu. The birth of a financial empire

The site reviewer studied the biography of Mexican entrepreneur Carlos Slim Elu, who built the country's largest conglomerate Grupo Carso and from 2010 to 2013 remained at the top of the Forbes world ranking. The entrepreneur is criticized for establishing a monopoly and using connections in the government of the country.

Biography richest man Mexican Carlos Slim Elu at first glance looks like a typical success story. The son of a Lebanese immigrant, he started working early in family business and later invest in various companies. Gradually, Carlos built his own empire and raised a fortune of $ 50 billion.

Along with fame, the entrepreneur received accusations of monopoly and use state structures to strengthen his position. Some analysts call Mexico "Slimland": while in the country, it is impossible not to encounter the products or services of Carlos Slim's companies.

Carlos Slim Elu

The Early Years of Carlos Slim Elu

The father of entrepreneur Julian Slim Haddad was born into a poor Lebanese family. At the age of 14, he left the country to avoid serving in the Turkish army. Four of his brothers were already living in Mexico. In 1911, Julian, together with his brother José, created the haberdashery store La Estrella de Oriente. The initial capital amounted to about 25 thousand pesos, the co-founders invested in it equally.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari, President of Mexico 1988-1994

Slim invested $440 million in the deal and received 20% of Telmex. A year later, it turned out that the real value of the company was $ 12 billion. In addition, two other shareholders were foreign organizations, and Telmex actually ended up in Slim's hands.

Surely, most researchers of the concept of “success”, lovers of studying the biographies of successful people, have heard the name Carlos Slim Helu. Yes, and billions of average inhabitants know him. And how not to know one of the richest people in the world? In 2010, the well-known Forbes magazine recognized him as the richest in the world!

Of course, most are wondering: “Why? Why did he succeed?"

Finding information in a search engine for the query “Carlos Slim Elu biography” is very easy, many sites describe in detail many facts from his life and systematize the points thanks to which he was able to achieve incredible achievements.

But still, a lot of this person’s life remains a mystery because of his lifestyle. Carlos was never interested in a glamorous social life and "window dressing" in public, moreover, he constantly tried to lead a life without prying eyes. That is why it is so difficult to find a photo with fragments of his personal life on a search engine request “Carlos Slim Elu photo”. Based on his biographical facts, many theories and assumptions can be built, in any case ordinary person Carlos is hard to name.

Judge for yourself: he grew up in the family of entrepreneur Julian Slim, who earlier, being a refugee from Lebanon, was able to organize his very own business in Mexico. successful business. As the father of six children, he raised them completely outside the box, because he attracted his sons to work in business and paid them not children's pocket money, not to mention moralizing and attitude towards life. Having an ever-growing amount of money in his hands from an early age, Carlos learned to manage it on professional investor level.

You can immediately see with the naked eye that the guy had a non-standard way of thinking and understanding of life thanks to his father. At the age of 12, he began investing in stocks, and at 18, Carlos Slim Helu earned a whole million and became a dollar millionaire.

It is impossible not to note his abilities. When the future billionaire studied at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the university, he managed not only to learn science excellently and at the same time successfully engage in investing, but also, being in his senior years, to teach the subject being studied to parallel flows!

Carlos Slim Elu's wife

The wife of Carlos Somaia Domit Germayel is also hard to call an ordinary girl, since she was none other than the cousin of the President of Lebanon!

They lived together for 32 years, and after her death in 1999, Carlos did not want to marry a second time, being one of the most enviable suitors, not only in Mexico, but all over the world!

You can talk about the path of Carlos's formation for a very long time, since in his biography there are a lot of ambiguous points in resolving issues. One of the main factors of brilliant success is friendship, in fact, with all high-ranking government officials in Mexico. There were many high-profile scandals and discussions of such a close friendship, especially during the privatization of the well-known Mexican company Telmex, then a scandal broke out about the behind-the-scenes friendship of the billionaire with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. He, in turn, pursued a policy of mass privatization with a course of economic deregulation. As practice later showed, Carlos Slim Elu, thanks to such a bargain, was able to monopolize the telecommunications market in Mexico, buying out all the local telephone companies in parallel. But the hype did not change anything, and the billionaire secured his position for decades. As early as 1995, at a time when financial disaster swept across the state, his Telmex company took a leading position in the state economy and was the leading provider of telecommunications services in Mexico.

Her net income is $1 million a year. But Telmex is far from the only company Carlos has made his fortune from. He started with insurance business, then acquired a chain of hotels and shops Sanborns. Moreover, thanks to the depreciation of a large number of companies during crises, Slim Elu bought them almost in bundles, for mere pennies, and then increased his profits thanks to the growth of shares in them. He united his entire empire into a holding company called "Group Carso". The next step was mining industry and the purchase of Frisco, which Carlos then brought to the forefront of the country's mining companies. In fact, every day by the end of the 80s, every second inhabitant of Mexico or every second enterprise had to deal with the structures of Group Carso.

And only in 1990, the billionaire acquired Telmex. In the second half of the 90s, the Carso Group was merged into the Carso Global Telecom holding. At the same time, investments in fiber-optic technologies began, and this is over one and a half billion dollars! Telecommunications equipment, web activities, co-ownership of Network Access Solutions with Microsoft - in general, despite his old fashionedness, Carlos actively developed along with IT technologies. But his powerful advancement in this area did not end there. In 2000, he took advantage of the crisis and bought on the cheap a number of telecommunications companies in the Latin American market, thereby going beyond Mexico, the list included the Latin American branch of such a well-known company as AT&T. Ultimately, he took a dominant position in Latin America in the telecommunications market.

Is Carlos Slim Elu an ordinary person?

What is most interesting, the billionaire does not like luxury and constantly teaches his employees the rational use of finances. As an example, Carlos Slim Elu prefers the simple, unobtrusive style that his family has lived in for decades.

Recently, the billionaire began to actively engage in charitable activities, in the accounts of his funds about 4 billion dollars.

We can say with confidence that it is still hard to call an ordinary person like Carlos Slim Elu. The success story of this person is simply amazing, but at the same time it is covered with a number of moral, ethical and moral issues, as an example, with Telmex rotation in oligarchic clans, monopoly and government support, etc. Not everyone can live like this and climb the podium of fame, and far not everyone needs this path. In any case, he skillfully knows how to use his capital and has acquired very influential acquaintances and is currently aiming to create his own family dynasty, for example, the Rodschilds or the Morgans.

Copying him completely as a person and acting like Carlos Slim, hoping to achieve similar results, hardly makes sense. And there is something for those who like to study biographies to learn skills and abilities.

The story of Carlos Slim Elu, the richest man in the world is interesting primarily because he achieved the height of his position through his work, perseverance, knowledge, faith and desire for victory.

His example is instructive in the first place important role love for work and instilled by his parents played in his life.

What is the secret to the success of the richest man in the world? What needs to be done to achieve such heights? What skills and qualities do you need to develop in yourself in order to climb the podium of wealth and fame?

Let's try to figure it out together...

Carlos Slim Elu born January 28, 1940 in Mexico City. In his family of Christian immigrants from Lebanon, Carlos was the fourth of five children.

Carlos' father arrived in Mexico from Lebanon at the age of 14. He spoke absolutely no Spanish and was completely alone, but he was full of enthusiasm and energy, as well as many ideas that he wanted to bring to life.

After 9 years, in 1911, Don Julian Slim, the father of the future richest man in the world, together with his older brother founded the company La Estrella de Oriente, which means “Star of the East”, which was engaged in the sale of groceries.

It must be admitted that Carlos Slim Elu's father was very talented and successful businessman . In just 10 years of the existence of his business, he not only made it very profitable, but with the money he earned he was able to purchase 11 units of commercial real estate in the very center of Mexico City, the most active and significant part of the city.

What helped the Slim family to become the richest?

Don Julian Slim became a well-known businessman and the father of an exemplary family, in which he was able to instill a love of work, respect and moral values. Subsequently, the father of Carlos Slim Elu took the post of president of the Lebanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry and is remembered primarily for his great contribution to the development of the Mexican economy, for which, later, he received the citizenship of this country.

Don Julian Slim was able to instill in all his children the importance of family relationships as one of the main priorities in life. I, as the author of this blog, was very pleased to learn about this, because I myself promote family relationships as the basis for increasing wealth.

It is the family that motivates you to achieve your goals. When you know that the life of people close to you depends on you, then there is simply no time to be lazy and no time to blame someone for your failures. You just go and do it.

I am deeply convinced that any person can reach unprecedented heights in life if he has a strong family, for the sake of which he will be ready for any heroic accomplishments.

First investment in… 12(!) years

Future the richest man on earth learned his first wealth-building lessons at an early age. The father distributed a notebook to each child and taught them to. Then they looked through the records together and analyzed the state of each.

Thereby simple rule Don Julian Slim's children learned and achieved wealth.

What conclusion can be drawn from this? To become rich, you need to develop your business.

key point It is worth considering the 80s passed the century. By that time, he was already a well-known entrepreneur in various fields. During the period from 1966 to 1980, he founded several other companies, and also acquired several large enterprises.

In 1982, Mexico plunged into a financial crisis due to the inability to pay its debts, which is why they began to rush to leave this country and withdraw their funds.

Thanks to this, I now work for myself and create such living conditions that I could only dream of before.

The secret weapon of the richest man in the world

In the early 1990s, Slim pulled off a major deal in which he acquired the country's largest monopolist, the telecommunications company Telmex (Telefonos de Mexico).

This event may not make much impression on some of the readers, but if you learn about the financial details of the transaction, then you will surely ask yourself the question “How did he manage to do this?”

The fact is that Carlos Slim managed to buy this company for 400 million dollars, while it was estimated at more than 12 billion.

This deal caused a wide public outcry, which prompted mass proceedings with the highest officials of the state, up to the president of the country. These trials ended in nothing.

And here it is worth mentioning about the ability of the richest man in the world to make and maintain useful contacts. In particular, he kept in touch and was a sponsor of the PRI political party, which was led by the now former President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas.

It was this collaboration that allowed Carlos Slim El to provide Better conditions for your business for years to come.

Carlos Slim Elu takes over the world

At the same time, the future richest man in the world understands that it is becoming too close for him to do business within the framework of Mexico alone and decides to enter international market.

Grupo Carso becomes a public company through an initial public offering (IPO). That is, anyone who wishes has the opportunity to buy a part of the company, becoming its shareholder.

In the 2000s, Carlos Slim Elu's corporation expands its influence in the telecommunications sector. The main assets of the corporation are shares in the Latin American consortium mobile operators America Movil and also in financial company Inbursa.

From 2000 to 2007 Señor Elu continues to buy telecommunications companies throughout Latin America. He buys assets in Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador.

In 2008, Slim acquires small holdings in Citibank and The New York Times. It was reported that the businessman invested in distressed or undervalued assets, established business there and then resold them.

Who is cooler than Carlos Slim Elu, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett?

In 2002, Slim Elu was listed as a billionaire by Forbes magazine. His fortune was estimated at 11 billion euros. Already in 2006, he takes third place with a fortune of $ 30 billion, second only to and.

In 2007, Fortune magazine reported that Carlos Slim Helu is the richest man in the world. However, Forbes did not share this point: in their opinion, in 2008, Carlos, with a fortune of sixty billion dollars, took second place, losing, and in 2009 he dropped to third place, due to the fact that the Mexican businessman, due to the global financial crisis lost more than twenty billion dollars.

In early 2010, after the improvement of Slim Elu's companies, according to Forbes magazine, Carlos Slim Elu becomes the richest man in the world, his fortune is estimated at 53.5 billion dollars. He is followed by 53 billion. In 2011, Slim Elu retains the lead, and his fortune is estimated at $74 billion.

The three most famous sayings of the richest man in the world



Family is the most precious thing

Slim Elu is a widower, his wife died in 1999, leaving Elu with six children. The oldest, Carlos Slim Domit, currently chairs the board of directors of the Carso Group. Other sons, Marco Antonio and Patrick, also take part in their father's business.

Carlos Slim Elu invested a lot in his family and most importantly - not money. He managed to instill in all members the value of family relationships, respect and love for each other.

Carlos, like many of the richest people in the world, does not skimp on charity, which can become a powerful incentive for the development of Latin America in the near future.

The richest man in the world spends huge amounts of money on education and social assistance, which once again confirms that all successful people have much more global goals than the satisfaction of their ambitions and desires.

It is necessary to set a goal for yourself that will help improve the world and leave a mark on it, which other people will later remember with gratitude.

Carlos Slim Elu was born on January 28, 1940 in Mexico City. He was the fifth child of a Lebanese refugee and the daughter of a successful Lebanese merchant. His father, Julian Slim, came to Mexico in 1902, bought real estate in downtown Mexico City in 1920 and opened a supermarket.

He managed to create a successful trading business. All six of Julian's children began to work in this business, from whom he demanded "loyalty, talent and diligence." In return, children received non-children's pocket money, which they learned to "manage" starting from the first grade of school.

Carlos was lucky with his business sense. With the blessing of his father, the teenager began to engage in stock investment, and at the age of seventeen, having mastered the rules of investing, he made his first million.

In addition to the wise advice of his father - to acquire useful connections - Carlos remembered another lesson. You must always look to the future. At one time, it was thanks to this principle that Slim Sr. managed to lay the foundations of family well-being.

In the most turbulent years of the revolution and civil war, when many people thought only of today, Slim used it successfully. As soon as the revolutionary troops of Pancho Villa approached the capital, the owners of land and real estate were ready to sell everything for nothing, just to get at least something for their property.

And Slim bought up houses and plots, firmly knowing that the turmoil and war would end sooner or later, and Mexico and Mexico City would not disappear anywhere ... This means that good land will always be expensive, there will always be rich buyers for good houses, and all people will always experience need to eat and dress...

Firmly believing in the wisdom and justice of these simple laws, young Carlos Slim began building his empire by opening a chain of stores. Marketing strategy Sliema was completely based on the lessons of her father: he developed a chain of stores where any Mexican, even of the most modest means, could buy everyday goods at affordable prices.

Bread, flour, sugar, salt, matches, soap, tobacco, paper, clothes - Slim's shops had everything that any person could need. Such a business model simply could not work. And as a result, by the age of 26, Carlos Slim had earned more than his father. His capital exceeded 400 thousand dollars.

Carlos Slim Elu's father died suddenly in 1953 when he was 13 years old. It was a huge stress for the boy.

As his fortune grew, Carlos Slim invested in all new areas of activity. If you believe in the country, any serious investment will pay off with a vengeance,” he says. Therefore, without fear of burning out, Slim bought up new interesting assets.

His companies produce cigarettes, car parts, equipment for oil production and mining, building materials, insurance, construction, passenger air travel, household chemicals ... Perhaps there is no such industry in Latin America in which Carlos Slim would not be present.

For many years, Mexicans do not get tired of repeating one saying: "You will not have time to wake up, and you are already putting money in Carlos Slim's pocket." Given the diversified business interests of the Mexican oligarch, this is almost pure truth.

Founded by him, the trading network "Carso" has spread throughout the country in fifteen years since its inception.

The next step was the extraction of ore and coal, and to this day, part of his diversified syndicate Group Carso, Frisco Corporation has become the leader of the national mining industry, as well as the chemical industry.

In addition to economic assets, Slim also acquired political ones (his contacts with high-ranking representatives of the Mexican government are of an informal friendly nature), among them friendship with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in 1988-94 became especially valuable.

According to Slim's detractors, the president's personal sympathies played in his favor when the question arose of the privatization of Telmex (Telefonos de Mexico), the state-owned telecommunications company, then (and for a long time after) a monopolist in the domestic telecommunications market.

In the early 1990s, Slim pulled off a major deal in which he acquired the country's largest monopolist, the telecommunications company Telmex (Telefonos de Mexico).

This event may not make much impression on some of the readers, but if you learn about the financial details of the transaction, then you will surely ask yourself the question “How did he manage to do this?”

The fact is that Carlos Slim managed to buy this company for 400 million dollars, while it was estimated at more than 12 billion.

This deal caused a wide public outcry, which prompted mass proceedings with the highest officials of the state, up to the president of the country. These trials ended in nothing.

And here it is worth mentioning the ability of the richest man in the world to make and maintain useful contacts. In particular, he kept in touch and was a sponsor of the PRI political party, which was led by the now former President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas.

It was this cooperation that allowed Carlos Slim El to provide the best conditions for his business for many years to come.

In 1996, Group Carso was spun off into the Carso Global Telecom holding, whose primary task was to coordinate the organizational, financial and technical means of the Elu Group. Subsequently, the holding included Condumex (manufacturing of telecommunications equipment) and Prodigy (the first Mexican provider and pioneer of commercial web activities).

In 1999, Carlos Slim invested $1.5 billion to control several US firms operating fiber optic networks and cell phone centers in Florida and Puerto Rico.

In February 2000, on shares with SBC, he became a co-owner of the well-known Internet provider Network Access Solutions. A joint project with Microsoft tripled the number of Internet users, which led to an increase in the sale of computer equipment.

Slim does not have a villa or even an apartment abroad. And all his travels are limited mainly to business purposes. Slim Elu speaks only in Spanish. He communicates in English with great difficulty and only in exceptional cases, as, for example, at the wedding of the American ambassador to Mexico, where he was invited among other guests, many of whom did not know Spanish.

For a long time, Slim considered charity as a meaningless and even harmful occupation. However, over the years, Carlos Slim has ceased to be such a die-hard and cynical pragmatist. In the last fifteen years, he has been increasingly involved in various charitable projects.

Now his budget charitable foundations approaching $2 billion, and Slim promises to put another $10 billion into it. True, one of the richest inhabitants of the planet has his own opinion about charitable activities. Carlos Slim believes that grants and donations, even the most generous, will not solve the problems of poverty.

Carlos Slim Elu is one of the richest, most successful and wealthy people in the world. In 2014, he took second place in the rankings, and for many years he had been its leader at all. In the homeland of Carlos, in Mexico, a certain legend is popular about how he, being the son of a poor immigrant, was able to somehow magically achieve immeasurable wealth.

In fact, his success story is not so cloudless. To become what he is now, Carlos had to learn a lot, fall and rise again many times.

Childhood and first income

Carlos Slim Elu was born in 1940 to Libyan parents. His mother was the daughter of a successful merchant, and she had every chance to take her place under the sun in this life. However, fate brought her together with a poor man who dreamed of escaping from home country not to serve in the army. Together they immigrated to Mexico. The family had five children, and Carlos was the penultimate of them.

In Mexico, Carlos' father went into the real estate business. The business was successful, however, after a while he decided to change the field of activity and opened commercial enterprise. All the children in the family, including Carlos, gladly helped their father in business, although he was quite strict with them - he demanded discipline, diligence and dedication.

Carlos and his brothers always tried to earn some money to the best of their abilities, and their father taught them to watch their financial condition. Each had a special notebook where all personal income and expenses were recorded. And then the father helped each child to analyze the financial condition and understand whether their small business is profitable.

Surprisingly, even as a teenager, Carlos began to be interested in stock investing, and thanks to his talent in this area, at the age of 17 he earned his first million.

After graduating from the institute with a degree in civil engineering, Carlos worked for some time as a teacher of algebra and linear programming. However, he had no plans to work purely in his specialty in the future.

The beginning of a great journey

And while studying at the institute, and while teaching, Carlos did not stop doing stock investment. It can be said that this was his golden key to the doors with the inscription "success". Having accumulated a significant amount, he acquired the Sanborns chain of stores and hotels. His goal was to improve the quality of the goods sold and the services provided, but not to make them prohibitively expensive. I must say, he used this strategy in the future - he bought a cheap product, made it better, and sold it at a higher price.

In 1982, Mexico began economic crisis. Most businessmen sought to sell their companies for negligible sums so as not to go bankrupt at all in the future. But Carlos Slim did not act like everyone else. On the contrary, he tried to buy up all the companies put up for sale, which seemed promising to him. Based on the acquired companies, he created the investment group Carso Group.

Further, the mining of ore and coal appeared in the field of activity of Carlos Slim. He was able to bring one of the Frisco companies acquired during the crisis to a leading position among the entire mining and chemical industry.

Holding Carso Group continued to grow, and already in the late 1980s, the number of companies in it was so high that almost every second resident of Mexico daily used one or another service that Carlos Slim provided to the people.

Politics

Carlos Slim was able to become a specialist in the political sphere. The management of many political assets was easy for him due to his knowledge in this area and his broad outlook. Serious officials and high-ranking representatives of the Mexican government appeared in his circle of contacts. Many argued that Carlos made political connections only for his own benefit.

For example, when the Telmex telephone company, all the time in the hands of the state, became his property, the media brought down a storm of accusations and claims against Slim. Although this slightly tarnished Carlos's reputation, his business empire did not suffer much. Stable business continued to bring in huge money, and no crises were an obstacle to this.

Business expansion

In the 1990s, Carlos Slim became a monopolist in the telephone service market and began providing Internet access services to the Mexican population.

Since the 2000s, while continuing to do business, Slim began to expand outside of Mexico. He became the owner of telecommunications companies in Argentina, Honduras, Colombia, Brazil.

Family

Despite the huge employment in business, the family has always been in the first place in Carlos's personal ranking of priorities. Having lived in a happy marriage with his wife, Slim became a widower in 1999. All six of Carlos' children are actively involved in his business. The eldest son is now the chief executive of the Carso Group. Money is far from the most important thing that Carlos Slim Elu was able to provide for his children. Father's love, respect and concern for the future of their children turned out to be much more valuable.

Quotes by Carlos Slim Elu

  • Don't go overboard, even when you can afford it. When times get tough, you will realize that you did the right thing by not allowing yourself to spend even an extra $100.
  • In business, it is worth sharing its fruits, but not the trees that bear these fruits.
  • I make all my decisions quickly. This is one of the main secrets of success.
  • Wealth must bring more greater wealth. That is why I am investing.
  • I don't care what other people think of me. The worst thing that can happen in a person's life is a constant concern about what his reputation is. I do not want to live out my last years, tormented by thoughts about what the public will think and say about me.
  • I love doing charity work. But if the country is in deep poverty, charity alone will not help here. To bring people below the poverty line, first of all, it is necessary to create stable jobs.
  • Don't look at others, do your own thing. When the crisis started and everyone was selling their assets, I bought them. Perhaps someone then considered me a fool, but where are they now, and where am I?
  • You need to be proud of yourself when you have already achieved something. When you just started doing something, this is not a reason for pride. Show the result.
  • Whatever team you create, always make sure that there are no pessimists in it. They are the killers of all ideas, proposals and undertakings. All my life I have been sick with optimism, and this is the only thing that has not allowed me to drown in a sea of ​​failures.

 

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