Mexican telecoms tycoon named world's richest

A Mexican telecoms tycoon has been named today as the world’s richest person, overtaking the likes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett.

Carlos Slim’s mobile phone holdings pushed his estimated fortune to $53.5bn (€39.17bn), taking him to the top of Forbes magazine’s 2010 list of the world’s wealthiest.

The 70-year-old son of an immigrant shopkeeper is part of the emergence of billionaires in developing countries, Forbes reporter Keren Blankfeld said, with this year’s top 10 also including two billionaires from India and one from Brazil.

“They’re kind of spread. It’s a nice spread,” Ms Blankfeld said of the list, which had long been dominated by Americans and Europeans.

Slim’s emergence at the top aroused both pride and anger in Mexico, where many see his fantastic wealth in a poverty-afflicted nation as a sign of what ails it.

The full list showed Taiwan tripling its number of billionaires to 18, Turkey more than doubling to 28, and Brazil increasing by 50% to 18. Russia also rebounded, almost doubling its number of billionaires to 62 after stock markets there recovered from severe setbacks.

The number of American billionaires rose by more than 40 to 403. That is more than six times second-placed China with 64 billionaires.

That the single richest man on the list should come from Mexico has drawn frequent criticism given the country’s ongoing battles against poverty.

While Mexico belongs to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, whose 30 members constitute the world’s most important market economies, it is also a developing nation.

More than 50 million of Mexico’s 107 million people live in poverty. Extreme poverty – defined as not having money to buy enough food – afflicted 19.5 million of them.

Mr Slim’s conglomerate of retail, telecom, manufacturing and construction companies so dominate the Mexican commercial landscape it is often easy for Mexicans to find themselves talking over a Slim-operated mobile phone at a Slim-owned shopping centre waiting to pay a bill to a Slim-owned company at a Slim-owned bank. If the line is too long, they can catch a quick coffee at a Slim-owned restaurant.

His Telmex telephone company controls 83% of landlines in Mexico and is the leading internet service provider. Another of his firms is the top mobile phone operator, and he wants to get into convergence services to offer television and interactive media.

Mr Slim is known for wearing inexpensive suits and rarely using the computers his companies sell, preferring old-style paper notebooks. A baseball fan, his indulgences are largely limited to cigars and diet soft drinks.

While he owns – either personally or through his foundations and museums – an impressive collection of art, including works by French sculptor Auguste Rodin, he works out of a set of somewhat dowdy, 1970s-style offices.

A civil engineer by training, he has bought up troubled or government-owned companies of all types, fixed them up and resold them for huge profits.

That kind of thrifty eye for undervalued businesses has served him well, especially after the market downturns in recent years.

One factor in his move to the top spot is that Mr Gates and Mr Buffett have given away chunks of their fortunes in charitable donations.

Mr Slim has donated to several causes, but not on nearly the same level. In January, he announced a $65m donation for genetic research on cancer, type 2 diabetes and kidney disease in Mexican and Latin American populations.

Speaking to reporters in 2005, he described his philosophy: “Wealth must be seen as a responsibility, not as a privilege. The responsibility is to create more wealth. It’s like having an orchard; you have to give away the fruit, but not the trees.”