How did Carlos Slim succeed?

The hat of the richest man in the world was worn by Bill Gates 13 years. /kloc-for 0/3 years, the concept and image of the world's richest man have been equated with this super figure. Now, times have changed slowly. The richest man in the world is Slim. ...

It is said that Slim, who replaced the title of Bill Gates, had reached $67.8 billion by the end of the second quarter of this year, surpassing Gates' about $59 billion. The report also said that in fact, as early as the end of March this year, Slim's personal assets had surpassed Gates' 654.38 billion US dollars, ranking first in the world.

According to reports, Slim is 67 years old, and his telecommunications company controls 90% of the fixed telephone market in Mexico. It is said that Slim's personal wealth is now equivalent to nearly 8% of Mexico's annual GDP.

In fact, outside of business, Slim is an emotional, intelligent and diligent family man. 1966, 26-year-old Slim, has just passed his career hesitation and found his own business field. At the same time, he also found his life partner Somaya and married her. On the road of life, this hand in hand is more than 30 years. In family life, Slim never mentioned his wife, but Slim's every move can make people see Somaya's position in his heart.

Grupo Carso is a comprehensive business group owned by Slim, which integrates many of his companies. Car is taken from the first three letters of Carlos Slim's name, and so are the first two letters of his wife Soumaya Domit. They are both named after their own business groups, abbreviated as * * *. Slim's feelings for his wife can be seen.

Carlos and his wife Somaya gave birth to six children, including three sons and three daughters. The names of the three sons were chosen as the surnames of the father and mother. This is a rare phenomenon in China and the West.

1999 When Slim's career was booming, his wife who had been with him for more than 30 years died of kidney disease. Since then, Slim has been widowed and never remarried. Slim's children know his father's sadness and regret, because they often see his father sitting alone, smoking a cigar.

In addition to being keen on business operation, Slim also has a very elegant hobby, that is, collecting a large number of works of art. He is the largest collector of sculptures by the French sculptor Rodin, and he has also collected more than 12 paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir. After his wife died, he set up a museum named after her to show his art collection as the deepest memory of her.

In order to get rid of his father's loneliness, the children gave Slim a computer notebook to keep him informed of the latest news. On the other hand, they also hope to reduce his loneliness. "The children have given me this gift for a long time, but all I can do now is to hit the keyboard stiffly." Slim said with a kindly smile.

However, this does not mean that Slim refuses to accept modern things. Although slim can't use a computer, he knows how to do business. He knows that new technologies will profoundly change people's lifestyles and all aspects of society. In 2000, Slim began to enter the field of Internet and personal computers. He first acquired CompUSA, the largest computer retailer in the United States, and later co-founded a Spanish website with Microsoft. Regarding these investment decisions, he said: "I can't fly a plane either, but this doesn't prevent me from flying often."

Although still brave in the business world, Slim, who is nearly 70 years old, began to think about how to pass on his business empire. From 65438 to 0998, Slim slowly and cautiously arranged his son and son-in-law to the highest position in the core company after undergoing open heart surgery. He did not consider splitting the consortium and distributing it to his children, but tried to keep it intact and prevent them from competing with each other.

In 2004, Slim handed over the position of chairman of the board of directors of Telmex Telecom, the core of the consortium, to his most valued eldest son, Domiter, and himself stepped down as honorary chairman of the board. Because of his father, 40-year-old Domiter is probably the most expensive bachelor in the world today. Slim also passed on his father's teaching and guidance to his children in education. In the 1980s, Domiter graduated from the School of Business Administration of Navajo University, and immediately entered his father's Telmex telecommunications company. But Domiter didn't go directly to the top of the enterprise. In order to truly experience himself, he chose to start from the bottom-to be a buyer in his father's small chain store, although it was dirty and tired. In his words, "this is also inspired by my father's courage." Domiter, a business beginner, has honed for 10 years.

Today, Domiter is following in his father's footsteps and making great strides in the business world. Domiter got a chance to show his business acumen in the consortium. It was at his suggestion that the family consortium turned its attention to neighboring countries, especially the United States. Telmex acquired a mobile communication company in Miami, USA, and occupied the local low-income Latino market. Its communication company operating in the United States has cooperated with Bill Gates and has become the third largest Internet access service provider in the United States. 1999, Dometelli acquired a 4.8% stake in Compusa/kloc-0, the largest computer chain retailer in the United States, and plans to gradually gain control of the company and transform it into a new company integrating communication product retail, R&D and services. Because of his excellent work, Domiter gradually gained the trust of his father and was gradually promoted to the top of the family consortium.

Unlike many founders of large consortia who are too busy to care about their children and spouses, the Slim family follows the traditional family view of Latino Lebanese. Monday is a fixed day for family reunion. A slim family will sit around the dining table, talk about daily life instead of work, and fully enjoy family life. Domittel thinks that work is not the whole of life. He has his own hobbies like ordinary people: reading, visiting friends and traveling in Mexico. "I like Zacatecas, morera and Cretaro. I can tell you that Mexican beaches are the best in the world, there is no doubt about it. "

According to the tracking statistics of Mexican online financial magazine Sentido Comun, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim surpassed Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who occupied the position of the richest man in the world for 13 years in a row, and became the new richest man in the world.

Eduardo Garcia, founder of online financial magazine, said that from March to June this year, the share price of America Movil, the largest mobile phone company in Latin America controlled by Slim, soared by 27%, making its wealth $8.6 billion higher than that of Gates. He estimated Gates' worth at $59.2 billion. In April, American magazine reported that Slim's wealth has surpassed Warren Buffett, the second in the world, but it is still lower than Bill Gates.

The gap between the rich and the poor in Mexico is extremely wide. A tiny percentage of the country's population controls most of the country's wealth, while nearly half of the population lives on less than $5 a day. Fortune magazine raised Slim's ranking because his shares in Carso and Telmex rose, while Buffett's shares in Berkshire Hathaway fell during the same period.

Garcia of Sentido Comun disagreed with Fortune magazine three months ago and thought Slim was worth more than Gates, but not much. Now there is no doubt that Slim is far ahead in wealth. Garcia used the calculation method of Fortune magazine to show that in the second quarter, Microsoft's share price rose by 5.7%, Telmex rose by 1 1%, and Inbursa controlled by Slim rose by 20%. It is speculated that Slim and his family's wealth accounts for 8% of Mexico's GDP. If Gates' wealth accounts for 8% of the total US economy, his wealth will exceed 13 trillion US dollars, which is 17 times of his current wealth.

Slim, who is famous for his talent of turning decadent things into magic and turning troubled enterprises into profitable enterprises, said in an interview with Reuters earlier this year that he was not in the habit of calculating wealth in the usual way. Carlos Slim, an industrial giant, runs industries spanning telecommunications, banking, energy and tobacco. And established a huge kingdom from cradle to grave in the western hemisphere, one of the poorest countries in the world. In 2006, his wealth increased by $654.38+09 billion, exceeding the growth rate of any billionaire's wealth in the past decade. In the last century, he ranked third on Forbes Billionaires List.

In Hong Kong, perhaps even in Finland, a self-made billionaire like Slim employs 265,438+08,000 employees, which is enough to modernize his country or region. But this is in Mexico, where the local media and the public deeply suspect that Slim's wealth growth has other secrets. He was accused of being a wealth predator and built his own business empire by virtue of his good relations with the president and other politicians.

Telmex, controlled by Slim, accounts for 90% of the national fixed telephone business, while America Movil accounts for 73% of the mobile service market. Television media in this country also openly broadcast cartoons questioning Slim. In a country with an annual income of less than $6,800 and more than half of its population living below the poverty line, it is not surprising that the legitimacy of its wealth acquisition is questioned.

Recently, Carlos Slim has taken a keen interest in charity, which has been neglected in business circles for many years. Twenty-three years ago, he founded a foundation with a sum of only a few million dollars, and it has not been operating normally since then. Slim injected $654.38+08 billion into the fund a year ago. In the autumn of that year, he said that he would donate $654.38+0 billion to the fund in the next four years to finance medical and educational projects.

Carlos Slim was destined for his future business development since he was a child. His father was a Lebanese immigrant, and he began to invest in real estate in Mexico City after the 19 10 revolution. Every Sunday, his father will give him five pesos to record his shopping in the accounting books. To this day, he still keeps five books from his childhood.

At the age of 26, Slim accumulated $400,000 from his investment and his mother, and married Sumaya Domiter. Domiter gave birth to three children, three women and six children, who died on 1999. Slim never married again. Today, three sons and two sons-in-law all hold senior positions in his holding company, and one daughter works in his museum. With a degree as a civil engineer and a keen business vision, he began to buy undervalued assets and businesses in various industries, with no special strategy or preference except the goal of making profits.

Forty years later, his business has penetrated into every aspect of Mexican daily life. His company sells car tires and repairs roads for cars. He owns Sanborns, a chain store with 65,438+080 retail restaurants. His bank provides housing mortgages for Mexicans. His factory produces ceramic tiles. His oil drilling platform collects crude oil and produces fuel. He mainly controls all his industries through Grupo Carso and Grupo Financiero Inbursa, which account for half of the benchmark stock index of 35 companies in Mexico. The index rose by 49% in 2006 due to the huge growth of Slim's wealth.

Slim bought a bottle factory in the mid-1960s and founded a construction company and a real estate enterprise, which became the beginning of Grupo Carso today. 1976, he spent 1 10,000 dollars to acquire 60% equity of Galas de Mexico, a small cigarette packaging and printing company. Five years later, he used the company's cash flow to buy 0% of the cigarette company Cigat AM 565438, which is one of Galas' biggest customers.

Due to uncontrollable inflation, soaring interest rates and bad debts, Mexico experienced an economic crisis in 1982, and even daring investors were forced out, but Slim continued to buy while other investors were cutting meat. 1984, he bought the insurance company Seguros de Mexico for130,000 dollars. Even after four spin-offs, the company's value today is still1500 million dollars. 1985, he bought Mexican retail chain Sanborns for $30 million, equivalent to $500 million today. 1986, he bought the mining company Minera Frisco for $50 million. Later, he acquired Condumex, an automobile parts and cable manufacturer, and many other companies. These companies currently form part of Grupo Carso, and the current price is $8 billion.

For 25 years, he deliberately avoided the attention of the public and the media, but after 1990 entered the telecommunications industry, he ended his low-key career. The privatization of the Mexican president made Slim buy 5 1% voting shares of the country's state-owned telephone company for1800 million US dollars. At that time, Slim only succeeded in bidding 70 million dollars more than the other two bidders, which immediately triggered people's doubts about whether the transaction had the conditions of insider trading.

In the first seven years, Telmex has been in a monopoly position in the field of telephone service, and maintained a higher telephone service price than any other region in the world. Until 1997, the country's telephone market was opened to competitors, and Telmex also had disputes with competitors because of its high access fees. From 1990 to now, its telephone lines have increased from 5 million to180,000, accounting for 90% of the Mexican market. Competitors' long-distance telephone access fees also dropped from 5.8 cents per minute to 1 cent per minute.

Slim's telecom kingdom expanded rapidly in the late 1990s. He spun off Telmex's wireless business and set up a new company called America Movil. The company became a market leader by targeting low-income users and signing contracts without credit cards or bank accounts. America Movil also provides discount mobile phones and prepaid calling cards, with the number of users increasing from 9 million in 2000 to 39 million today, and the revenue increasing from 4 billion dollars to 22 billion dollars last year. Slim owns 30% shares of America Movil, valued at $25 billion, and 80% shares of Carso Global, valued at 1 1 billion, while Carso Global is the holding company of Telmex.

Slim is now fully engaged in charity work. In the past ten years, his foundation has provided 6.5438+0.5075 million college scholarships, 6.5438+0 million contact lenses and 66 million bicycles for poor children. He thinks he still has five years or more to make the right decision.