Carlos Slim Helu

His father Julian, a Lebanese Maronite from Jezzine, fled as a teenager to Mexico City to escape harsh Military rule. Julian established a dry goods store and worked in real estate to which he prospered. Upon his death moderate finances were inherited by his family.

With the help of his father’s inheritance Carlos became a businessman and applied involvement in a variety of companies. These include telecommunications, retail, banking and insurance, technology, and auto parts manufacturing. He is the wealthiest in Mexican decent and one of the top ten richest men in the world.

The financial success that Carlos has achieved has been from finding undervalued companies and making them profitable. Though he was criticized for raising phone cost soon after purchasing Telmex, he improved phone services offering local and long distance calls, mobile phone services, internet services, and a telephone directory.

His business ethics repeated in several other companies throughout his life. He has been vice president of the Mexican Stock Exchange and president of the Mexican Association of Brokerage Houses. He was also the first President of the Latin-American Committee of the New York Stock Exchange Administration Council.

Perhaps his most significant achievement was in building the Mexican financial-industrial empire, Grupo Carso, which owns, among other companies the CompUSA electronics retail chain.

His notoriety has earned him not only financial reward but he has also been awarded a Merit Medal of Honor, the Golden Plate Award, as well as the Leopold II Commander Medal.

In the year 2000, Carlos organized the Mexico City Historic Downtown Foundation, whose purpose is to revitalize and rescue Mexico City’s historic downtown. These revisions will allow for more people to live, work and find entertainment in the area.

Carlos announced the creation of Chapultepec Accord, which is intended to persuade the development of Latin America through the building of human capital and structural investment. It calls for public-private partnerships to fund education and hospitals. This effort gained him significant admiration as well.

He graduated from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National in 1961 and is an engineer.  Before graduating he taught Algebra and Linear Programming

Carlos Slim Helú branched out to mobile communications.  Through his  control of Telcel, he operates almost 80 percent of Mexico’s cellphones.

Calos also had an impact on the United States telecommunications market when he was MCI’s largest shareholder, owning 13% of the stock.. In April  2005 he sold his stake in MCI to Verizon Communications.