Famous financier: Carlos Slim Helu

The second richest person in the world, and the wealthiest Latin American, Carlos Slim Helu is an investor, entrepreneur and businessman.

Who is he?

Carlos Slim Helu is a Mexican investor who is famous for being actively involved in the companies he invests in. His success has come in a large part from managing to spot undervalued companies and transforming them. The most well-known of his ventures was taking over Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) – the Mexican version of BT.

To start with he was criticized as the call rate went up, but he managed to make phone services in Mexico much more reliable and flexible.

While often described as an investor, Slim Helu is in many ways more of a businessman as he provides a lot more than money to the companies he gets involved in. As well as telecommunications, his group of companies include banking, technology and retail.

Slim Helu is also an active philanthropist, having given over five billion dollars to fund health and education projects, particularly in Latin America.

Top quotes

"I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization. Some retail groups are introducing e-commerce and think that the "bricks" are no longer useful. But they will continue to be important."

"When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered."

"It's not a question of arriving and putting in a whole new administration, but instead, arriving and "compacting" things as much as possible, reducing management layers. We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don't believe in having big corporate infrastructures."

Find out more

Carlos Slim Helu’s website