How Slim Got Huge

Come back, Bill Gates! After some initial misgivings, the world had largely grown comfortable with the Microsoft founder as the closest thing capitalism has to a mascot -- the No.1 spot on Forbes magazine's list of the world's wealthiest people. We liked that Gates was a self-made Harvard dropout; that he helped make computers easier to use; that, due largely to him, it was suddenly cool to be a geek. Anger over Microsoft's near monopoly status had subsided in recent years due in part to Gates's stunning philanthropy and the emergence of Apple as a hip corporate alternative. Having Gates atop the Forbes list told us a lot about the world we lived in -- that we were all part of a "new economy," an ideas-driven society where technology, innovation, and intellectual capital were the keys to getting filthy rich.

What, then, to make of the man who in the summer of 2007 appears to have replaced Gates as the world's richest person? His name is Carlos Slim Helú. Today, his fortune stands at more than $59 billion -- and grew, on average, more than $1 billion a month last year. What kind of world are we living in now? Slim has been widely accused of monopolistic practices; he catapulted himself to the top spot on the back of his company Teléfonos de México, or Telmex, which has a 92 percent stranglehold on his country's local fixed-line market. Slim's business empire, the scope of which is largely unprecedented in modern economic history, ranges from cigarettes to airlines, from electric cables to floor tiles. In all, Slim's net worth is equivalent to a stunning 6.6 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product (GDP), easily eclipsing Gates (0.4 percent of U.S. GDP) and even John D. Rockefeller at his peak (slightly less than 2 percent in 1937). Although it may be unsurprising to see such gross wealth disparity in Latin America, what do we make of the growing list of billionaires in countries such as China, India, and Russia that supposedly represent the global economy's future? Are we entering a new era of robber barons? Does the shift of investment and production to emerging markets herald a rise in "crony capitalism" worldwide? Or does the rapidly accumulating wealth of Slim and his ilk merely signify an undesirable byproduct of a very desirable process -- the spread of free-market capitalism around the globe?

THE NUMBERS GAME

Recently, Slim has behaved a bit bashfully, like a man who knows he is not popular. Described by some who have met him as disarming, austere, and even humble, he seems to be aware that much of the world isn’t exactly thrilled to have an alleged monopolist in the No.1 spot. Long scornful of charity -- he once criticized Gates and others for acting like Santa Claus because they gave away too much money -- Slim recently announced plans that will make him one of the world's leading philanthropists. Meanwhile, Slim has gone out of his way to be understated. Other Latin American tycoons tend to ride around in black SUVs with tinted windows and security details, even when they're abroad. On a recent trip to Washington, Slim rented a modest Ford sedan at Ronald Reagan National Airport and chauffeured himself around D.C. -- alone -- while dropping in, unannounced, on business leaders and bureaucrats. Some of this is due to Slim's apparently genuine frugality; he has lived in the same relatively modest house for three decades (Gates, for the record, lives in a 66,000-square-foot waterfront compound with a pool that has an underwater sound system). Yet when you hear Slim repeatedly brag that he owns no homes outside Mexico, he does sound a bit defensive. Then again, if your net worth on paper had increased by a rate of more than $2 million an hour during the past year, you’d probably be looking over your shoulder, too.

To that end, Slim only this year has given up a long habit of cultivating anonymity. He has even begun talking regularly to the press. Perhaps he realized his ascension to Forbes' No.1 spot would fan public interest; perhaps he has grown less protective of his privacy as he retires and bequeaths his business interests to his children; or, perhaps, as with so much else with Slim, he just acted on a rather eccentric whim. When Slim granted an interview to USA Today in April, he made the reporter promise he would deliver to his editors an "improved" baseball box score design that Slim had specially created for the newspaper's sports pages. Whatever his motives, Slim worked the media circuit like a Hollywood star this summer, detailing his passion for baseball (favorite team: the New York Yankees), showcasing his art collection (he owns several Rodin sculptures and Renoir paintings), and talking proudly of how he inherited his business acumen from his father (a Lebanese immigrant named Yusef Salim who invested in real estate and opened a general store at the height of the Mexican Revolution). Above all, Slim loudly professes one obsession: "I like numbers," he says. "Words speak to some people; to others of us, it's numbers." He credits this trait with his success as a financier. Slim buys up companies on the cheap, manages them intelligently, and turns them into cash cows; his operating philosophy is less Bill Gates than Warren Buffet (now likely the world's third richest person). Indeed, at this advanced, almost incomprehensible stage, it would seem that Slim is accumulating wealth not out of greed but just to make the numbers dance in his head.

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