Carlos Slim Helú: Telecom titan
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Welcome to good bad billionaire from the BBC vote service. Each episode .

we pick a billionaire.

we find out how they made their money.

the bbc's business editor.

And on this episode we have mr. Mexico himself. exactly.

Very hard to walk out of the door in mexico without putting money in this man's pocket. No slim pickings for this guy.

no. And he is indeed called slam. His name is color slim elu, although everyone just called him color .

swim t four years old, color slam has been compared to the circle robber barren of the U. S. People like rockfeller nie j. People with monopoly of certain industries.

But he is just one man, and his vast business empire is a congruous in every sense of the word. Hundreds of companies in construction, mining, oil, realistic insurance, publishing, airlie hotels, oh, my god, and running out of breath.

that is not the end of the your average mexican interacts with one of his companies almost every day.

And that is, by the way, one hundred and thirty million people who wake up in a house heated by slims oil, paid for by a mortgage at his bank. They shop in his department to eat at his restaurant and smoke cigarettes before driving home on roads built by him.

Yeah, such as his dominance that mexico has sometimes been called slim lana.

And in the late two thousands, he actually became the richest person in the world, a title he held for several years .

I M moment when he was named as the richest person in the world, because I thought, who the heck is this guy? I'd never heard of him. And there is edging out bill gates.

I think maybe if the first and only mexican to become the richest man in world.

but despite his vast wealth, and he is a cty billion air, that means you go over one hundred billion dollars. He's described as frugal. He once apparently haggled with the storing of for several hours, get ten dollars of a time.

And he has lived in the same relatively modest six bedroom house for decades. He is actually said the housewares I was born in was Better than the housework I now live.

He actually drives himself around mexico city, although, of course, he is followed by a convoy of heavily armed body guards.

And he does have an idea of which is smoking a cuban cigar, reading about his hero, the mongo walloon gangers can.

Interesting hero.

That's one business mentor.

And as the richest man in the world back then, he didn't even use a computer much to the check ground of bill gates, i'm sure, who he edged out. Instead, he he used to keep track of his business dealings in notebooks.

Now his real extravagance only really comes down to art and artifacts. So if we step in to slim's office, you see michelAngelo vano rewa in roda.

Yeah, he's got so much. He founded an art museum called museum a to help house IT that's named after his wife. Reportedly, our collection worth a cool billion dollars.

Now, as he mentioned, he is no longer the richest person in the world. But this year, he's still saying pretty at .

number fourteen. Yeah, that's because we've seen in other episode of the rise of the tech tightened. So as they've got richer, he slipped down the list. But as you say, still worth over a hundred billion. And his most valuable business, the industry, he is probably best known for, is the lattin american telecoms company, american movie.

So he's so dominant in that market that he's widely been called a monopolist. And in fact, many blame car los for mexico's slow economic development, which will get into later .

yeah in a country where over a third of the population live in poverty, he's seen by some as a symbol of massive inequality.

So is car or slim, good, bad, or just another billion? Aire will find out.

Let's go back to the beginning. Let's take in from zero to a million.

So Carlos' was born in mexico city in one thousand hundred and forty, the fifth of six children to lebanese Christian immigrants.

Before collars was born, his father opened a general store in nineteen eleven.

and that's always prety successful. So his dad invested the profit in commercial realist. And by the time Carlos came along, his dad was a rich business man with a significant property portfolio.

And like father, like son, that that encourage Young Carlos to take an interest in his business, taught him at a read financial statements, keep cords, and every sunday he would give colors of five passo allowance, telling him to record every purchase in one of those notebooks.

Now, dao, dad would actually tell car last money that leaves the business evaporate.

which turned out to be very interesting because IT was, through the reinvestment of all those proceeds in more and bigger companies, kind of secretive.

His wealth, yeah really super charged. His finances and colors actually still keeps the ledges from his dad store in his office as well as his own childhood ledges. We mentioned as a billionaire still uses notebooks rather than computers. Clearly, he's a man who prefers paper.

yeah. At ten years old, he opened a checking account car in account, but he quickly realized he wasn't getting much return on his deposit. So instead he bought government savings bonds.

These are things that the government will, you can save money, they give you a rater return, and that money the government can use to spend. So we have the similar sort thing here in the U. K. And you'll get a Better rate of return than just leaving your money in the bank.

But i'm going to guess that there are not a lot of ten words in the U. K.

Currently investing in those. no. And unless their parents have done IT for them and buy the age of twelve, he made his first stock market investment, buying shares in the mexican bank. I was just talking to a billions echo RAID delier, who now runs the world's biggest tetched fund. Last week, he said he made his first stop purchase at exactly they mate.

eight, twelve. What is IT about twelve years old? Some twelve eos are clearly just meant for business.

But tragedy struck when colors was just thirteen. His father died from a heart attack.

and its obvious colors found his death extremely painful. He actually stopped socializing. He says he stayed in his home for two years.

but he was smart. Two years later, he started high school. He became top of his class despite being bullied as the sun of lebanese migrants.

Interesting background may be that immigrant mentality pushing to work card. But, you know, he was still a fan of things like baseball. He traded baseball cards in the playground. He became a new york anche fan and as an doubt, he he doesn't have that many hobby apart from baseball he said to have a money ball memory for baseball starts something he also uses in yeah money bull.

referring to that movie made about the way that manager came along and use stats to compiled the best value team he could for money. And IT turned out to be a fantastic success and do so .

something used across different sports, primarily football.

exactly. He was a precocious invest that he attended his first m general meeting of shareholders as a teenager when he was interested in mining company.

By seventeen, his network was thirty two thousand pesos. Now the average annual wage in mexx ico at that time was roughly ten thousand. So he's doing pretty well themselves as a teenager.

Yeah, if I can translate them into U. K. Terms, the average annual salary in the U.

K. Is thirty five thousand pounds, give or take. So three times that would be a hundred thousand pounds. So at seventeen he's going pretty.

But he was also interested in further education, so he didn't drop out like most billion. He attended the national autonomous university of mexico studying in engineering.

Yeah, he was a top student. He was asked to teach some of the other students algebra. Any formed a student investment club with an entry requirement of a few hundred paces. Think of books club, but you bring ideas to invest to the club of the books.

to pay a membership which is quite cony business.

so clearly destined for something in the markets. So he became a stock broker after fishing his studies. And what was a flagged stock market in the early one thousand nine hundred and sixty in mexico.

he was part of a group of Young stock brokers who became known as lost cases, serious or the stock market boys. They were trade by day and played dominated by night.

a fellow cases, serros said. Carla wasn't that interested in parting in trading. He never like money as much as the rest of us. weird. He just wanted to be a good business man.

And Carlos had red business guides, including how to be rich ed by jay poor getty, who was then the wealthy st. Man in the U. S. That said, one should cultivate equal millions mentality by being always in above or cost conscious and profit minded.

So but he has mid twenties. He opened his own stopped broker firm and founded a real estate business. Its name was a combination of his and his future wife's name.

Now, sama dome, the love of his life. He met her when he was around sixteen, and he was twenty four through their mums. But IT seems like a kind of genuine love story, you know, pictures of the couple looking very old school hollywood glam, staring into each of these eyes. I mean, IT kind of looks almost a little bit Adams family like, because sama has such a giggling tic hair.

Do yeah IT like like the golden hollywood that so they married in one thousand hundred and sixty six at this point. He's twenty sixty years old. They went on a fantastic honeymoon, england, greece, new york, nepal, spain, france, about forty days, saying different places, cities and countryside.

Luckily, he can afford all this international travel. His broken age firm does well. And combined with the real state, by the time he was married, he was worth four hundred thousand dollars. So here's, at this point, almost tough way to .

a million million U. S.

Dollars is a lot in mexico ah. And this is mexico in a mid sixty.

So big money. So he then sets about using this cash to get into all sorts of businesses. He said his success comes from spotting opportunities early, something he learned partly apparently from reading futures writer alvin toffler, whose best selling future shock book explains the psychological and societal effects of rapid technology and social change.

Now actually interestingly latter in life, the author himself sent Carlos manuscripts to .

review that sounds like a job application to me.

me on as a consulting.

Exactly.

please. I hear you, fan. So at the time, I didn't seem to matter what industry, the thing that he was on the look out for was a bargain. So an unloved asset that could make him a tidy profit.

Yeah, that reminds me a bit of one of our other billionaire, which is war buffett, always on the look out for companies which have got great potential that knocked down Prices.

So in slims example, he would buy a bottling plant, a soft drink company, a cop mine, a printing company, and then he goes around.

turning around their fortune. And interestingly, these are all very different businesses. Cli hasn't got specific knowledge of each individual business area. He just has a sense of what undervalued, what isn't, what's going to a prosper what isn't, and having a diverse portfolio in lots of different business. Ses, having your eggs in more than one basket insulate you against risks of which there will be plenty in.

This story is so interesting because to non investors like myself, the idea that you could invest in something you don't actually know very much about or have specialist inside the knowledge of seems quite strange. Like IT seems like you're taking an unnecessary risk. But clearly, this isn't the first billionaire we've heard of who's investing in a vast .

majority of things yeah, I think the mentality is you look at the market share of the business is currently got, whether that market is going to do well, whether it's financial cemento, whatever IT is. And then you look out to the returns you'll getting the profitability of the business versus the Price. You add those things together, you can begin to get an idea whether something's good investment or not.

It's almost like the .

money ball approach.

Yeah, yes, exact. Now, in one hundred and seventy six, color spends one million dollars buying sixty percent of galaxy mexico, a small company that prints the labels for cigarette packets. Now this is an investment that will soon become very significant. And did.

And in nineteen and eighty, he combines all of his business interest into a conglomerate called group galas, later changing named a group of castle, again, boring initials of his much loved wife.

So by one thousand nine hundred eighty, his congruent is starting to take shape and with a huge raft of profitable companies. And if he's buying just one of them for one million dollars is safe to say that color slim is almost certainly a millioned.

He's made a million, but he is about to make possibly his most important purchase, which will help him get from a million to a billion.

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There's something on this boat, ten of cocaine. There was a lot of a journey. I couldn't .

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the BBC world service. This is world of secrets season five, finding mr. fox. Search for world of secrets. Wherever you get your BBC for costs.

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Random stranger in the elevator. Happy friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with geo feels just like that. Get more with.

Now IT can be hard to determine why and how some of our billionaire do what they do in business, but Carlos actually wrote his ten business principles for group or castle very early on.

And these principles are distributed anley to all employees. A little guide book for employees they're available on the car or slim dot com a one of three ninetieth website do check that out.

Yeah IT looks like a little retrod geo city's website and we're not gonna cover all of them. But I think it's quite interesting to read about his kind of guiding philosophy, one of which is that, and this is rule number two, you have to maintain austerity in good times as the strengthens profits and accelerates the development of company by avoiding drastic adjustments in times of crisis.

This reminds me something joel borne chancer in the U. K. Once said, you've gotto fix the roof while the sun is shining. And for what that means is, sometimes when the good times roll, IT can be tempting to over, expand, grow too quickly, and sometimes you can get into trouble that way.

So car or swim, thinking of business as a kind of philosophy and attitude towards life.

The couple of the other one I quite like IT says all times are good times for those who know how to work and have the means to do so.

An optimistic guy, you'd say, yeah.

In fact, one of these other prints was firm and patient. Optimism always yields its rewards.

I wonder how much of an inspiration this was two rest of the employees in his company, or whether this is just something they kind of received in their in boxes with another kind of like car lost after, again.

the principles became printed on the back of your past to get into work. One of.

if you work for a group of castle.

let us know back to one thousand and eighty one, he buys another company that will be an incredibly important purchase because he uses the profits, is made from galatia. He is a company that prince cigarette labels and buys fifty one percent of the company's biggest customers. The cigarettes ker .

now sick time with mexico, second biggest tobacco company, which had the license to make mobils in mexico.

Yes, this business gave us something. He needed a very strong cash flow to spend. And there are some businesses which are highly cash generative.

Cigarettes is definitely of them. Even today, the returns you make on buying cigarette companies, which a lot of people they want to do anymore, are incredibly high. And what cash does is if you're got cash flow, you can use that cash to service any debt you wanna take out. If you've got cash coming in.

thanks will lend you extra money. And that's because people will always just buy cigarettes because addicted to smoking. Well.

it's a bit like newspapers were back in the murdoch's era. They generate a lot of cash coming in every day, not so much. Now, of course, with the internet and what that's done, the newspaper.

So the importance of having a kind .

of corn stone cash engine is a hugely import.

a big roaring fairness .

of yeah exactly. And and his timing on this was pretty good because mexico was about to go into a debt crisis.

Maxo had had huge debt for some time, but IT was also a major oil producer. I was able to service those debts, but in the early eighties, international oil Prices were collapsing.

and this LED to mexico, declaring what's known as a sovereign default in one thousand and two sovereign fault, is a country saying, I cannot afford to pay the money that i've borrowed. And basically, government's borrows money on international markets from international investors. And that comes a point sometimes in some countries where they default on this death and .

that kind of food to plate. It's a very big deal, right? Is IT basically .

like a big red emergency and no want to fault hamper your ability to ever borrow money in the future? Either people weren't lend IT to at all, or i'll charge you an awful lot for the privilege of borrowing .

IT and presume ly, it's also terrible for the businesses that are in your country.

right? IT can be because those businesses also borrow IT money on international market, and if the country itself is defaulted on its debt, IT basically makes the entire country look less credit worthy and other companies in IT.

So how did mexico respond to the sovereign default? Well, the outgoing mexican president, who's a Lopez partial nationalized the banks, which made capitals fear the country could be becoming socialist.

Yeah, so investors, business sooners, they fled the country, which meant they were putting up companies for sale, going seriously cheap, some for as little as one percent of their value on .

paper and color. Slim was looking on. He remembers of that time, the year thousand nine hundred and eighty three was crazy. People wanted to sell not only their investments, but also their companies. And so he uses this influx of cigarette cash because people still light up in the financial crisis, and maybe more, because is so stressed.

And he went on a shopping spray. And this is a fantastically interesting moment, because, again, warm buffett is the greatest investable time. Some say saying you, you invest at the point of maximum fear, right? So this takes incredible courage to be rushing in when everyone else is rushing the other way.

Yeah well, I mean, it's so of like what was that one of those business principles he writes about where all times .

are good times for those who know how to work and have the means to do so. He's got the cigarette cash companies going cheap, so he goes all in while others were getting out, inspired perhaps by his father, who had brought out his partner in their general store during another turbulent time in the country's history, the mexican revolution. So basically, when all around are losing their heads.

keep your cool. Yeah, keep your cool and invest. But at the time, colors was actually really showing his friends. He was saying things like.

countries don't go, bro. And in a way, that's true. One thing that country can always rely on is that has the ability to tax its population.

And that means they can always get money in. Plus, if you own the central bank, you can just get them to prince some money. Now, sometimes that can cause inflation, but a sovereign will always have the financial resources of its citizens to draw upon through the form of tax.

right? So that phrase, too big to fail.

that applies in this case. Well, yeah, a country can ultimately fail forever. People still need to buy and sell things, and people still need to make a living, and that living can be tax. So a country will always have some resources.

So color slam was experiencing a bit of a bargain basement shopping spray, yeah. And he was buying dozens of big companies at bargain Prices, including general tire and .

reno aluminium, mexico's largest insurance company, mexico convenient .

torching cut sand bones, which he bought from wall Greens and actually have been his dad .

d's biggest competitor. And many others were losing big color, said these were the best times ever.

And by the end of the eighties, the companies under his conglomerate had revenues of more than one point five billion dollars.

So the next big purchase for colors is part of a now familiar story for good, bad billionaire. This was the big wave of privatization, publicly government owned assets being sold to private markets.

And this was the nineties. So like many governments at the time, then president color celine's guti began privatizing those industries. He wanted to help kick start the fAiling economy.

Yeah, he was a controversial figure. President color solinus, his president was marked by scandals. He believed improving mexico's telemundo ation infrastructure could help businesses grow and grow the economy.

And actually much the same way that, you know, china and africa's telecoms industry were like huge drivers of growth .

yeah particularly africa because in africa, for example, they can of lep for telegraphy res and went straight to mobile and that really accelerated their growth. So telemundo ation is like the lifeblood of the economy, right?

Because you can't really call up business, oh, and make a deal if the telephones dont work.

And at this time, the national phone monopoly temeke was in a pretty poor state. IT had just five lines for every one hundred people that half the global average of ten lines per hundred and fifty lines for every hundred in the USA at that time.

Now until maxus privatize in nineteen, the cell was the largest privatization in lattin american history. And Carlos one a bid.

he put up half of the one point eight billion us. Dollar cost, and he got a controlling twenty percent stake. He became the bigger share hold that as well as chairman.

And upon buying time max, he promised a phone in every village. And to the first, he did spend billions on .

infrastructure. Some did. Where are buying a fAiling telecomm good investment. But as one executives at the time, it's like selling water in the desert.

Within a year of his purchase of tel max, net profit was forty four percent.

which meant nineteen magazine, which does people outside of the U. S. Listed color slim as one of just two hundred and two billion airs in the world.

So at the age of fifty, one color slim is officially worth one billion dollars. He is a billionaire.

He's still a long way of being the richest person in the world, which he became at one point. So how does he get there?

But on his way to a billion, let's learn a little bit more about Carlos, the person.

Yeah, all the money in the world can't keep you healthy forever. And in one thousand nine hundred ninety seven.

he almost dies. yeah. At the age of fifty seven, he had a heart role replaced IT didn't go according to plan. He was briefly declared dead on the Operating table after suffer a massive hemery .

remember his that died of a heart attack. And after this health scare, he starts handing over some of the data running of his empire to his children.

He had six kids with his wife, sama. Remember that the love of his life, the person with him, his museum of arts, named after, but in one thousand thousand nine hundred and nine, SHE died eight.

fifty one from kidney problems, as you say, love of his life, he never remarried. Their wedding photo remains on his desk.

although he did actually quit to a telegraph reported back in two thousand and eleven. The only sports he perhaps, as nowadays, is hybrid in box spring, referring to cocktails.

ls and mattress. Yes, nice. Anyway, most of his children still work in his business empire. They've taken on different aspects in different parts of the.

and every monday he meets his three sons and two sons in law for a homecroft meal at his house to discuss business of reminiscent of elva h bosses. But I know is a monthly lunches .

of his kid on that one. And you can hear that episode in our archive about whether his kids look forward to that meeting.

I've just wondering, yeah, you kind of wonder how they look at the saldar.

Oh, great. It's time to go and dinner with that again. Anyway, his health care doesn't stop him back on the business story. After buying tel max, he then bought one of the two main supplies of the copper cables that tell max used for telephone wise, that is, a vertical .

integration and a that s didn't buy any cables from the other big supplier.

But perhaps the secret to his vast wealth was a little detail of the deal that was done. Remember when he bought telemac, the alien telecoms company, back in one thousand nine hundred ninety? There was an extra bit that he bought at the time, which nobody could know how important was going to be because he had a cell like like the mobile license for the entire country. And just think what that does. In the age of the internet and wireless communication.

nobody could really predict the rise of the smart phone or the rise of digital communication.

So he was in which previously realized.

now this is huge, because by two thousand and one, the cell phone division of telmex, called amErica movie, became a separate company. And with the rapid growth of cl phone usage, the company absolutely dominated mexico.

Incredible numbers by the late two thousands tell mex control over ninety percent of mexico's phone lines, an american movie controlled over seventy percent of mexico cellphone market.

And don't forget, the two thousands are also, at the time of the dot com crash, which colors took advantage of. So he bought other telecoms companies on the cheap, including A T N T latin america.

Today amErica movie is latin america's biggest telecom company.

which effectively means to mind that color slum Operate a monopoly. The market even been .

accused of being a monopoly. One of the big criticisms that to people have of him and some people say monopoly are very good for the people who own them, but they're not very good for the rest of the economy because you don't get the kind of competition, the kind of innovation, the kind of you that, that race to try to be Better than the next person, which makes services Better and cheaper. You don't get that with I.

gaby, that is knock on the effects for the consumer, right? Because you can basically charge whatever you want. You can provide a bad service and you don't have a kind of worthwhile competitor to go to to give your money to and say, hey, i'm not having a good time with this other guy yeah can you could .

provide me with a Better contract? You've got no choice .

argue that glosses control of the mexican telecoms industry slowed down the nation's development .

yeah the CD that the oranienburg economic CoOperation development, the club of some of the most advanced economies, estimated that IT cost mexicans and extra thirteen billion dollars a year between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine because there was no Price competition .

and in two thousand seven study from the world asserted that public and private monopoly with the main issue for slow economic growth and development of the mexican economy in fact, it's one of the worst .

countries in the world in terms of competitiveness of in and so why was he allowed to have such dominance? Well, in IT, he's the country's largest prive employer and the biggest taxpayer.

Yeah, when he put in that way, he's got a lot of power. indeed. And according to the wall street journal, mexican congress routinely killed legislation that threatened his interest. And because his firms account for a big chunk of the nation's advertising revenue, that makes the media reluctant to criticize him because they live off advertising reviews.

right? You ve got to imagine also that his riches have brought him enormous counts of political influence. I imagine when you become political leader, mexico, one of the first people you are invited to meet is color slim.

And though he has a reputation for being a pretty personable guy, when you do meet him, he's known also to have a short temper and to be sensitive around press criticism.

We should say that cause himself denies his monopoly. I like competition. We need more competition. As a quote from him .

conveniently, however, he also thinks this no harm. And dominating a market if they offer a good service and low Prices. In his words, if A, B, N, mexico costs one pestle and in the U. S, IT costs two puzzles.

And I don't see the problem yeah unless in fact, unless one of the competitors could send you for half a pace. So so you are still paying double what you might otherwise pay even if .

it's half for IT is in the us a very good point. Now he denies his company's charge, high Prices, despite many analysis suggesting otherwise. He's also told the new york ka, if society would have tell me to get out of business, I would do IT, but please ask my critics what they have done for the country. How many jobs have they created? Oh, how they hate me.

That's funny. But the money he was making from his telecomm s empire, he invested further in the other sectors, construction, mining, oil, broadcasting, airlines, hotels. Well, you name IT.

he owns IT. And by two thousand and seven, he more than two hundred companies across his portfolio.

So in two thousand and seven, color slim companies made up one third of the four hundred and twenty two billion dollar mexican stock exchange. Remember when did mukh ambani and we were talking about the percentage of the socks exchanged? The end? This is dwarfed by the dominance of color, slim, five percent of mexico gross domestic products. Mukh amari, I was something like three percent. And so he's almost double the size of machaon bi grip on the indian economy.

And you can listen to that episode in our archive, if you recognizing him ambarisha's 羽。

that's the guy who paid for featuring very famous guess.

including beyond, say, and one boris Johnson.

So anyway, this is the moment when he sneaks ahead of microsoft founder bill gates. And this is that episode two, and they vie for the title of worlds, Richard person, over the next few years.

Now some people say that the reason why slim was beating gates to the top is because slim, unlike bill gates, was rather slow to adopt charity in philanthropy. Yeah.

is worth for remembering just how big these numbers are. So his fifty nine billion dollars at the age of sixty seven in the nineties, that means for at least two years, can also have been making twenty seven million dollars a day.

just for context, by the way, because we're talking about mexico, a fifth of mexicans were getting by on less than two dollars a day.

Incredible inequality. But IT wasn't just in mexico who's spending money throughout the two thousands. He push beyond that in america. He purged some stakes in U. S. businesses.

So in a very typical move of colors, when the financial crisis hit in two thousand and eight, he actually bought one hundred and fifty million doll stake in the wall street bank city group. Yeah.

going back to that thing, invest in the moment of maximum fear. And having lived to the financial crisis as a journalist and reporting on that, I can tell you people thought the financial world was on the brink of collapse.

But did you still hear about color slum and people like color slim m going around picking up?

Yeah people like warm buffett bought in and lend some money to gold and sax example, the color slim buying into city. So this takes incredible courage to be rushing in when everyone else is rushing the other way, because banks are going back left, right and center.

So what does the richest person in the world do with all that money? Besides going a bit of shopping? Spray, he buys a newspaper. Phoo.

he bought percent, taking the new york times, put two hundred and fifty million dollars into the company through a six year one. And again, this was during the height of the financial crisis, where IT was pretty hard to oro money from banks who didn't have any.

And in two thousand and fifteen, he spent another hundred and one million dollars to buy more shares, bringing his state to seventeen percent.

Newspapers are a funny business. They haven't been great investments financially, but they do get you influencing power. Witness right now in the U. K.

There is a bidding war going on to try and buy the daily telegraph, which is actually a profitable newspaper, which is pretty rare among newspapers. But but often they are trophy assets. Witness jeff bases buying the washington post.

yes. And one of our other billionaire, Patrick soon sang, who's a tech entrepreneurship is now the billionaire wor of .

the L A times. yeah. So that gets you influence IT gets you control of the narrative.

That gets you power IT gets you a direct line to the editor in chief who made themselves also be very well .

connected and also IT gets you a lot of sway with politicians because politicians are very, very sensitive .

to and understandable. When the stakes are this high, you bound to make some people very angry with the purchase. Now, in fact, a new york times mexico correspondence said, slim is the consuming monopolist is being embowed in a business culture of backscatter ching and unseen forces make him a great partner for the times. I don't think so.

We talked a lot about successes. IT hasn't always been easy.

Now in the second half of the twenty tense, Carlos actually started slipping down the richness less rankings. Now this is partly due to, as you mention, the rise of the detect brows like maxara buran jeff baza.

Also, latin amErica is prone as a continent to basically care financial crisis from time to time. And there was a currency depreciation against the dollar. There was a recession in brazil argentino evanier problems. So that can affect the purchasing power of th Epaces y ou're m aking i n m exico w hen y ou t ranslate t hat i nto p urchasing p ower i n o ther c urrencies.

And unlike some of other billion's like jeff also Marks up, he's actually tied quite regionally to lain america.

yeah. The net result of that is that his fortune is worthless in dollar terms. Says another reason he starts falling down the list.

Now one of the issue is that when a new government took power in mexico in twenty twelve, they also brought anti monopoly laws designed to increase competition in telecoms. And they were pretty much designed to curb the power of american movie yeah.

a competition consulting said the government's attitude towards his empire was quite a big change. This is the first time slim does not have a copy of all the keys, according to this unknown consultant.

Now under the new law, his company couldn't charge freeze to its smaller competitors when their users called into its work. And IT has to share its infrastructure like its cell.

ours. This meant a steep fAllen profit for american movie over the next few years.

but Carlos fought back, arguing the new laws forced the american movie to subsidize competitive. And in twenty seventeen, a mexico supreme court ruled that align competitors to use its network free of charge was unconstitional tional.

Despite this back and forth, having a conglomerate which Operates across many industries means to spread the risk so he could wear the storms, in particular industries and rockets pretty well.

Now Carlos has repeatedly claimed he's about to retire, but then suddenly branches out into a new territory. And it's a move that's been compared to the tactics of his hero gingerous kn, who used to kind of low his rivals into a full sense of security with tactical retreats before going on the offence.

yeah. And age eighty four, IT doesn't look like he's stopping. In june of this year, he got into the U.

K. telecomm. Small, and he paid four hundred million pounds for a three percent stake in B. T. Forming in his british telecom are not .

a former monopoly, and this year was the first time his worth topped one hundred billion dollars, according to forbes. So Carlos is officially a 6 billion。

But one hundred and two billion dollars these day sadly only brings you to number fourteen on the list. So he is no longer the richest person in the world.

But still, when you're talking about people who and hundreds and hundreds of billion dollars, number fourteen, isn't too bad, a place to land a okay.

so we're going to judge his eighty four years old. These were one hundred and two billion dollars. Let's assess him in our categories. So we assess .

all our billion's according to different metrics. Wealth, rags to riches, know how I traveled to their wealth levels of valencian. We rank them from zero to attend. So let's start with wealth. How much is color slim.

worth hundred, two billion. He was richest man in the wealth of many years out of ten. I'm onna. Give him A A very solid nine, particularly because he comes from one one of the poor countries in the world.

I he is not going to give him a higher ranking because part of how we judge this category is how they spender. And he's not exactly a lavish spender. So apparently for decades, he didn't own any houses outside of mexico, and he still lives in this unpretentious house in mexico city.

And buffet. He lives in the same house he had since one thousand nine hundred and fifty in ha.

yeah, I mean, I feel like his pilot is probably a little bit more adventures in warm buffet. Warm buffet, famously big lover of I feel like maybe car or slim has slightly more elevated taste that i'm still .

i'm still going to give him in line simply because of the wealth relative to his country. For example, in two thousand and seven, his wealth was six percent of mexico's entire national income. Now if bill gates were to have a similar chunk in the united states, he would have to be worth seven hundred and eighty four billion. Rather, the actual fifty nine billion. That color, slim, was worth back in two thousand and seven.

Still, I feel like if you want to make IT in the world stakes for me, you gotta spend .

like a billion. Like to see the cash fast.

I like to see the cash, cash. I want to see submarines with missed detection systems, you know, super car collections. So i'm going to give him a modest seven hour.

Okay, nine for me, seven for you. Rags to riches, how far as he come? Well.

it's an interesting one because his family comes from pretty humble origins, as you know, lebanese immigrants to mexico. But by the time Carlos born into the family, they were doing quite well.

basically a pretty solidly successful business person, teaching him the rope, giving him some advice on how to get ahead. But he did get very, very rich. So i'm going to give him a six.

And in the country, I guess, where getting very, very rich was actually quite rare at the time.

Yes, six for me.

I would say six for me as well. You know, he's done pretty well for himself.

okay. So willene half his monopoly damaged mexico. Yes, according to some on the ox farm report, for example, said the extreme wealth and inequality in mexico continues to grow. The total wealth of mexico y's fourteen altera individuals has doubled since the start of the covet pandemic, in particularly at that of color slim rights. Oxfam, the richest man in the company, has as much wealth as around sixty four million mexicans. And as we said earlier on the monopoly question, the ocd reckons that between two thousand and five and two thousand and nine, his monopoly of telephonically cost mexicans thirteen billion dollars.

There is a lot of money, and also the environmental cost of his business. You know, he's been called out for businesses and oil and mining. You know, his company actually won a seven hundred and twenty four million dollar contract on the mayor train project, which has caused serious environmental damage. So apparently legal complaints were fed by groups living along the route trying to stop the railways progress.

yeah. And the guardian newspaper named him as a top carbon meter alongside eleven other billions, including jeff basis and roman abram, of which you can listen to those episodes on our archive. And they went on, twelve of the world's wealthy billionaire produce more Greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, private jets, mentions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of two million homes. I mean, it's amazing that color slim has kept such shape clean profile, given the fact that mexico, often racked by organized crime, violence, drug trafficking at seta, he seems to have risen to the top, the very top of the economic tree, without any of that tainting his international reputation.

Especially, you know, going through several decades, right? He's kind of that pretty made money continuously .

throughout the year on villi. I'm going to say that monopolies m is bad for a developing country. AmErica decided monopoly were bad. That's why you have something called the anti trust laws, which are competition's because they wanted to break these big steel trust, banking trust, railroad trusts, because they realized they were holding americans of development back. IT was am not pleasant going to say that that's willene I so i'm gonna give him an eight on that basis.

I mean, for you, the reason why he's villinous is the monopoly asp. I would say for me, the environmental aspect, just kind of what tips are over for me. I think you I think that IT seems incredible that he's one of the billionaire who are producing the energy emissions of two million homes.

Task i'm onna give him an eight on villani for his monopolist tendencies and you going to give .

i'll give a two for different, different reasons.

okay. Let us then talk about philanthropy. How much of your villines can you absolve through your philanthropy?

So on car or slim dot com, there's a rather long quote from bill clinton that begins with Carlos lam is one of the worlds most important philanthropist, and most people have never heard about his humAnitary arian activities. Yes.

so let's talk about them now. okay? He does donate billions to various charities, education to health, although many have argued that he doesn't give enough, given the poverty of mexico and how ubiquity his companies are. If you can't step out your front door without giving money now.

interestingly, he's been publicly skeptical about whether money spent on philanthropy is actually worthwhile. Yeah, back in two thousand and seven, he said he had no intention of going around like sand giving away his money.

And at the time when he was the richest person in the world, he was actually openly critical of the giving pledge started by bill gates and more and buffet to give away half your money in your lifetime. He said, charity doesn't solve poverty. How much charity has been done in the past years? Trillions of dollars. Instead, he argued, many of the problems will be solved by business .

activity and development, but presume ly, his business activity and his development.

not so much petitt. He said, wealth is like an orchard. You have to share the fruit, not the trees. And he he he liked to own the trees.

yeah, he liked to own the trees and any trees that won't to be planted. I'm sorry you're not coming into the orchard.

So I don't know what to think about philanthropy. He's given a way a lot of money. They escape to go about how much good IT does not going to do straight down the middle. Give IT four .

maybe yeah I would say .

a four of ten so okay four from based on power in twenty eighteen, forbes ranked call off the two of the the most powerful person in the world.

Now understand, given that bill clinton route a forward for his website, he's also been known to health clinton ina his home yeah.

had a turbid relationship with Donald mp and donor. Trump, of course, had determined the relationship with mexico .

and mexicans in twenty and fifteen Carlos's TV production studio scrapped A T, V deal with trump after trump said, remember this, some mexicans .

crossing the border into the united states were rapists. String the media conspiracy to defeat his election campaign.

Two years later, however, Carlos offered to help mexico negotiate with trump, and he actually praised trumps negotiation skills and said trump would create positive change for those in mexico.

So a very weird relationship. Denise dresser, mexican academic who won a journalist Price in two thousand and nine from open letter he wrote to the billionaire IT, says past, present made, i'd say, feeble attempts to regulate color slim. But they created a months or so big. It's very hard to deeds cate him at this point.

Wow, so sounds as if mexico has a very turbulent relationship with color slim. So power, I would say, in mexico, in mexico.

it's a ten. I have the most powerful person in a pretty more powful the present.

I mean, imagine if rupert murdoch owned important companies across every single kind of industry in the U. K. And you get someone .

like slim yeah within mexico he's at ten. And mexico is one of the world's most important developing economies. I'm going to give them an eight for worldwide power, right?

I'm going to go with an average. So ten in mexico, eight for worldwide powerful. So I think he's in nine out of ten for me. I imagine if you get elected to lead mexico, one of the first people you call is car or slim.

Yeah okay. So you're giving him on giving eight. You'll giving him nine on power and then legacy. How will people remember him? What will he leave behind?

Well, interestingly, when colors was asked if money motivated him, he said, the truth is, when I pass away, I will not take one cent with me. And my opinion, wealth is a responsibility. And in some ways, a you must keep IT growing and use IT to society is benefit. And new york .

times editorial board member at while a porter route, IT takes about nine of the captains of industry and finance of the nineteen and early twentie century to replicate the footprint that mister slim has left on mexico. So he's talking about people like rockerfeller vanda built after carnegy. So color slims impact on mexico is bigger a bunch of those combines? That's quite a legacy.

yeah. And in fact, if you go to mexico city now and you wonder around central historical, that entire district has been completely cleaned up that historic old town by car or slim, because IT was once ful of all these crumbling buildings. IT was a real kind of hot bed for crime. And walking through IT, hard to imagine IT ever was like that. It's now beautiful, viBrant, completely well preserved.

Yeah, the tRicky one is knt, because he has become vastly rich, and he would say he's taken mexico with him. I mean, I think he would argue that he's tried to do good his country. He's pulled the country up along side his own vast increasing wealth.

And not many of our billion's can say that we've done that for the country. They were born in billions, you know, like a bunny, yes. But you know, if you say jeff bays, also mark zuck burg, you've left a huge impact on the world.

But on america, did you pull up amErica from. Being a pretty like developing nation? No, you can't really say that. But color slim can see that for mexico OK.

So mean legacy within mexico. He'll probably be one of the most famous people ever. He'll be like rockfalls in the us.

one. I mean, he'll be member for generations as being the rich guy. So I think again in mexico i'd give him a nine at least for legacy. So yeah will he be remember red in the rest of the world not so much so overall longing to give him seven .

for legacy um so nine, nine in mexico, seven internationally. What's that divided by two, eight, eight? I think in eight, ten works difference, the difference.

And we got to decide this is always the hardest pit, whether he's good, bad or just another billionaire.

It's difficult, isn't IT. I mean, I did rank quite high on villino.

I'm gona say he's marginally bad. I think he probably has done great things from mexico. He he's being described incredibly competent but because of his monopolistic tendency, which I am convinced his bad for a country, i'm going to say he's just shades into the bad territory.

I think when you think about the level of inequality in mexico and you pulling aside the billions he's done for anthropic ally a clearly hasn't really made a dent on the inequality in mexico. O and he's become this real symbol of the gap between the rich and the poor, something that's only really expanding.

It's turkey on this. Do you blame the rich people for inequality is going to mean is, is, is that the people who get richest fault? There's inequality, or is is the way the society is organized.

But then when the rich people are engaging in business practices, like you point out, of monopoly, you know, and struggling competition, and actually, you know, some might argue, costing people money out of their pocket because they excess such a monopoly on their daily life, then I think, yeah.

Or like you say, he warded into bad .

territory for me. So color slim, you are sadly a bad billionaire .

held be got IT.

So who do we have on the next episode?

We have a woman who spotted a gap in the market, a gap between generations, and named the company after IT.

Her name is Doris Fisher. And SHE, with her husband, dawn, founded the clothing giant. The gap.

which was born the summer of love faded in the one thousand nine hundred and eighty, was totally downs in the one hundred and ninety.

And we'll update the story to tell you how he made a billion from that good, good.

bad billions that was produced by hanna hofford, a Louis Morris, with additional production support from ama veterans James cook, the editor, and it's a production for BBC world service.

For the BBC world service in the podcast commissioning editor is john.

A search for the .

truth behind an international drug smuggling plot.

There's something on this boat, the of cocaine. There was a lot of a journey. I couldn't .

believe what was happening. And the members.

zilia police believe to be at the center from .

the BBC world service. This is world of secrets season five, finding mr. fox. Such a world of secrets. Wherever you get your B, B, C or costs.

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