MEXICO CITY?Carlos Slim, the world?s richest man, first showed a talent for business as a 10-year-old kid when he filled his pockets with pesos selling drinks and snacks to his family.
As a youngster, he also kept accounting ledgers of what he earned and spent and bought a government savings bond from which he learned valuable lessons about compound interest.
More than half a century later, Slim has topped the list of the world?s richest people.
Slim has become involved in combating poverty, illiteracy and poor healthcare in Latin America, but has never voiced plans to give chunks of his wealth to charity, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates or fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.
Businessmen, he says, do more good by creating jobs and wealth through investment, ?not by being Santa Claus.?
His business empire includes some of Mexico?s best-known department stores, its biggest telco operator, hotels, restaurants, oil drilling, building firms and Inbursa bank?making it hard to go a day in Mexico without paying him some money.
Midas touch
Cigar-smoking Slim?s trademark is his ?Midas? touch, acquiring struggling firms and turning them into cash cows.
In 2008, he bought a minority stake in The New York Times as the stock tanked. Now, warrants he received for lending the publisher $250 million could net him more than $80 million and could lead to a 16-percent stake in the company for Slim, who says he has no interest in becoming a US media baron.
Slim learned his first business lessons from his father, a Lebanese immigrant who came to Mexico in the early 1900s, opened a general store and bought properties cheap during the Mexican Revolution.
?No evil lasts 100 years?
In 1987, when stocks nosedived, Slim saw opportunities where others feared disaster, picking up low-priced shares and selling when they recovered.
?We know that crises are always temporary and there is no evil that lasts 100 years, there is always an overshoot,? Slim once said. ?When there is a crisis that provokes an adjustment, an overreaction comes along and things get undervalued.?
Slim?s enormous wealth stands starkly against his frugal lifestyle. He has lived in the same house for 40 years and drives an aging Mercedes Benz, although it is armored and trailed by bodyguards.
He eschews private jets, yachts and other luxuries popular among Mexico?s elite.
After studying engineering, Slim founded a real estate company and worked as a trader on the Mexican stock exchange.
His wealth growing, he began his trademark trait of buying failing businesses.
By 1990, Slim had built the fortune he used with partners to buy Telmex and launch his telecoms empire. America Movil now has 201 million customers from Brazil to the United States.
