Carlos Slim Helú

Carlos Slim Helú was born in Mexico City in 1940 to Lebanese immigrant parents. He began investing in Mexican stocks as a teenager and built Grupo Carso through acquisitions of undervalued Mexican companies in the 1980s. His transformative move was winning the privatization of Telmex (Teléfonos de México) in 1990, which gave him control of Mexico's dominant telephone company at a time when it was still a monopoly. He leveraged this into América Móvil, which expanded telecom services across Latin America. At his peak in 2012, Forbes named him the world's richest person with a net worth over $70 billion. Slim has diversified extensively into retail (Sanborns), construction, insurance, and other sectors through Grupo Carso. He has also been a significant investor in the New York Times Company.