A Mexican business magnate of Lebanese origin, Carlos Slim Helu, narrowly eclipsed Microsoft’s Bill Gates to become the wealthiest man on the planet with combined earnings of US$53.5 billion. He remained in the ascendant for each of the subsequent three years, even doubling his net worth during that time before finally losing his crown to Gates in 2014.

Historically, the world’s richest men had always been monarchs: Augustus Caesar of Rome, Emperor Shenzong of China, the fabled Mansa Musa of the Mali Empire and Akbar I of India. Following the advent of both the Industrial and French Revolutions, kings would be replaced by the Robber Barons of the United States’ Gilded Age. Successful industrialists, often considered ruthless and unethical, like Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D Rockefeller.

Slim’s accomplishment in the 21st century was the first time anybody from the developing world had topped the list in the modern era. A relative unknown outside of Mexico up until that time, he would be among the 25 or so billionaires in the world of Lebanese origin to be parodied by the writer Joseph O’Neill in his 2013 novel The Dog ¹. A scathing tale about a New York attorney mercilessly exploited and then made a fall guy by the Batros family, an immensely rich, eccentric and ruthless Lebanese clan based in Dubai. Notoriously discrete, Slim has always said he has no interest in becoming the world’s richest person. With fame comes scrutiny and this kind of satire.

And the criticism is obvious in a country where so much of the population lives in penury and thousands are forced to risk their lives in search of a survival wage across the U.S. border. Mexico is a country of 110 million people with over 40% of the population living in poverty, yet the companies Slim owns account for 40% of Mexico’s entire stock market. If he were to distribute his money to all of his compatriots, they would each receive around US$500. Moreover, it would mostly be their money. The average Mexican spends 1.5 pesos a day on Slim’s goods and services. It is almost impossible to go a day in Mexico without contributing to his wealth. His influence is now so pervasive that many Mexicans refer to their country simply as ‘Slimlandia’. “It’s a state within a state” according to George Grayson, a professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, who invented the title. “Someone in Mexico will get up in the morning and eat breakfast in one of his restaurants while reading one of his newspapers. They will then make a phone call on one of his phone networks and buy insurance from him too” ².

It would take thirty-two years to count just one of Slim’s billions of dollars. Like almost all of the mega-rich, he doesn’t spend his time consolidating his fortune but uses it to make more and more money. In 2010, for example his earnings were averaging US$2 million an hour.

Slim is the owner of more than 220 companies. Dozens of businesses across 20 countries. Amongst them, America Movil, the biggest telecom in Latin America with the largest cable telecommunications infrastructure anywhere in the world (290,000 km). There are also cable TV companies, gold mines, oil companies, both cigarette factories and hospitals, Saks Fifth Avenue stores, electric cable manufacturers, construction firms and train lines. Though born into wealth, his success was built on having a keen investment eye for value. His astute mathematical brain and business vision are indisputable. He has a long history of buying stakes and investing in companies which he sees as undervalued during troubled economic times then making them extremely profitable.

An acquaintance of Bill Clinton, Sophie Loren, Stephen Hawking, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, Al Pacino, and Joe Biden to his supporters Slim is just a classic old-fashioned businessman. His critics however complain that he runs monopolies (for example he controls 90% of the Mexican telephone landline market) squeezing out competition and forcing up prices, and that he has benefitted disproportionately from the cheap privatisation of state industries. According to Celso Garrido, economist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Slim’s domination of Mexico’s conglomerates prevents the growth of smaller companies, resulting in a shortage of paying jobs, forcing many Mexicans to seek better lives abroad.

Some also claim Slim has used his political connections to become rich – something which Slim vehemently denies. The journalist Diego Osorno observes in his 2015 biography of Slim that “…in Mexico there is a very popular notion that without the help he received from the government he would never have reached the heights of the world’s richest” ³.

The American rapper Riff Raff even penned a song entitled Carlos Slim ⁴ in 2016, the lyrics and music video for which suggest the magnate enjoys a lavish and showy ‘bling’ lifestyle. This is not true. He drives himself to work in his own everyday Mercedes 4×4 automobile through Mexico City’s infuriatingly slow traffic, he eschews private jets, he doesn’t wear luxury items and has lived in the same 6-bedroomed house in the Lomas de Chapultepec area in the western hills of the city for the last 40 years just 3 miles from his childhood home. When he travels abroad, he stays in hotels or friends’ houses and doesn’t own mansions abroad for personal use. Furthermore, by all accounts, Slim is a friendly, kind, and down to earth guy. He considers his six grown-up children to be his best friends and enjoys a reputation for modesty and restraint. He also has a sharp sense of humour, as suggested in a rare interview given to Harriet Alexander of the Daily Telegraph in 2011:

‘We sweep through the streets, while Mr Slim on speaker-phone dictates a letter in heavily accented English to the film director George Lucas via his secretary, Silvia: “It was great to see you so unexpectedly the other day,” he says. “You should come to Mexico, and we can spend some time together”. Then, correcting himself: “No, change that. That sounds too gay.”’ ⁵

Despite his lack of pretence or ostentation, Slim does not seem keen to share a significant proportion of the wealth he has amassed with those less fortunate than himself. His philosophy is based upon a conviction that poverty is not fought with donations, charity, or public spending. Instead, he prescribes (just as the likes of Edward Seaga would) that the fruit of wealth should be distributed amongst society through market driven investment and employment opportunities. Slim genuinely seems to believe this to be true, persuading Osorno of his sincerity that he is not a mere miser but something more complex. A known fan of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet when drawn on the subject of philanthropy Slim likes to quote from its verse On Giving ⁶:

‘All you have shall someday be given: Therefore, give now, that the season of giving may be yours and not your inheritors. You often say, “I would give, but only to the deserving”. The trees in your orchard say not so, the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish’.

It is difficult to understand how Slim can so publicly and unreservedly advocate such selfless generosity which upon any objective analysis, the poet’s words have evidently not prompted. Yet he seems less disquieted by such paradoxes than Gibran himself used to be.