Mexican tycoon overtakes Bill Gates as world's richest man

I actually had the pleasure of meeting the man, I went to my wife's cousins wedding at his ranch. He seemed quite a decent fella, however my wife did give me plenty of examples of his unscrupulous business antics, but I reckon you have to be a bit ruthless if money is your motivator!

 

Well, this is my take on this issue.

There is no question than Slim is a master businessman, and money maker, as evidenced by his wealth.

The way he has gotten into his extremely powerful position and the ways in which he ensures his continued dominance is what detracts from his standing in the public eye.

Mexico's law outlaws "monopolies" yet he has continuously operated semi-monopolies for years. True, these is more than just his telco company, but if you live in 9 out of 10 places in Mexico, you only have one choice for land phones and thats a company the Slim controls, and admittedly, without knowing, I'd bet that he has a stake in most if not all other tel companies operating in Mexico, so he can dictate pricing (Highest average it the world BTW). Likewise with the wireless services, true, TelCel has "competitors" but they are, and have always been, small and insignificant, as for some reason :roll: they cant seem to get permits to build towers or get access to enough frequencies to provide good coverage or reliable service, and many times have to lease Telcel towers to get any coverage at all. And again, with seemingly all of the big stores here, which Slim has a hand in, that "compete" with each other, don't really do too much competing IMO. The list goes on and its more or less the same story in any field of business he has a controlling interest in. He stifles completion and keeps prices artificially high and wages low. This, in turn has a ripple effect to nearly every other business in Mexico, so they are not able to offer real competition of pay noticeably better wages.....if they expect to stay in business.

As for his charitable donations..... WOW a few billion (around 4 according to a quick google, which apparently he has gone to great effort to point out to others) out of his 67 something... so thats about 6%....Hell.. I donate much more than %6 of my wealth. At least with Gates you know he gives away more than he keeps. ( or so I have read )

I've never meet Carlos Slim, and doubt that I ever will, but my opinion is that in general the Mexican people would be better off without him and his controlling interest in 222 of Mexico's biggest companies and considerable influence he has over the governing bodies.

& one quick personal errk I have against him.... He owns my former Fav store in the whole world CompUSA in the States, which has great prices on everything electronic. Here however in Mexico you will not find any such great prices on electronics, instead you will find stores (Sanborns, Sears, etc... that he owns and everyone else matches his prices either because of his control or just dont want to give up any money by selling at less then they have to) selling electronics at a %30-%100 markup over the States.

 

Even though his US based American Movil stock prices pushed him into the number 1 spot, Slim does less well on a level playing field, as evidenced by the massive restructuring going on at CompUSA, as shown below, courtesy of Wiki. And while his business tactics may be evocative of certain 19th Century financial bucaneers, we need to remember the anti-trust laws and market regulations that emerged in the USA to control the same abuses Slim engages in on a daily basis.

The predatory pricing that exists throughout Slim's business empire is a key element in Mexico's dreadful economic growth (Pemex notwithstanding), although I'm sure that a few well placed "donations" could probably result in advantageous pricing for a company attempting to start up in Mexico. Of course those very "donations" are illegal under US law and a prudent corporation will just give up and go elseshere.

Closings
On or immediately before February 28th, 2007, CompUSA retained the services of a liquidator, for the purposes of closing 126 stores nationwide.[6] The closing locations were chosen based upon their overall performance, profitability, and proximity to more successful competitors such as Best Buy, Fry's and Circuit City. Among the CompUSA stores that were liquidated, were every Long Island location, every store in New Jersey (except the Mount Laurel store), the downtown Chicago store, all Minnesota locations, two Florida locations (including one of the two Miami locations), all locations in Missouri, over two-thirds of stores in California, including all stores in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas, all stores in Michigan (except the Lansing Superstore), all stores in the Washington DC area (except Columbia, MD), all the stores in Georgia (except the Augusta, GA Superstore), stores in the Philadephia Area, and all stores in Phoenix.

During the liquidation process, the stores typically offered discounts starting at 5 percent to 30 percent off of retail prices, ending at up to 90 to 95 percent. The liquidation process was completed on May 14th, 2007, and all stores were completely closed by the following Friday. At the time of the closings, there were internal rumors circulating that additional stores would possibly face closure.


References
^ "CompUSA To Buy Good Guys", About.com, September 29, 2003 http://hometheater.about.com/b/a/030627.htm
^ "CompUSA Names New CEO", Yahoo! Finance, September 1, 2006 http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060901/CompUSA_ceo.html?.v=1
^ "CompUSA seeking buyer, paper says", CNN Money, September 13, 2006 http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/13/news/companies/CompUSA_sale/index.htm
^ "CompUSA Announces Realignment Strategy", Press Release Feb, 2007 http://home.businesswire.com/portal...d=news_view&newsId=20070227006439&newsLang=en
^ "The Rebate Debate: Why Were They Late? FTC Settles Charges Against CompUSA", Federal Trade Commission, March 11, 2005 http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/03/CompUSA.htm
^ http://www.CompUSA.com/locations/closing_stores.asp http://www.compusa.com/locations/closing_stores.asp

 

My two pesos:

First, I have great respect for Gates and little or non for Slim. Bill Gates is self made, Carlos was born in opulence. But I do know he is a financial genius. Back in the 80s when Prez Salinas ransacked the county and everyone was pulling their money out in panic and looking for other markets to invest in the world, Slim boldly was buying stocks left and right of companies in distress. He took some risks to get to where he is. But then again when Telmex was privaticed (by Salinas again). He bought 90% of it for 2 dollars and pennies, a few years later his stocks were worth $56 per share.

The guy is ruthless and has no mercy on the little people. But I must give him credit for improving the quality of Telmex. For those of you who rant about the crappy quality and prices, Back in the early 80's you had to wait for years to get a phone line (not enough lines and no one cared to increase the revenue). On top of that having a phone line was like concession, you paid I think close to $800 for your land line, and you could sell it, transfer it etc.

Now, it's not cheap, but in metro areas it is fairly easy to get a phone line, and not nearly as painful as it was back then.

I also hear he wants to turn the UNAM into another Harvard, that might not be a bad idea . I don't know how he could do that because UNAM is a public university (unless the government builds a brand new and much better university).

 

Why are you guys so mad at my uncle :?:
I just don't get it.

Life_N_Cancun,
I need some Math tutoring. Wanna help me out?

 

wellcome to economy class kids :bash: :wave:

I think money is like a drug. you can't get enughf of it.

 

http://www.banderasnews.com/0708/edop-robberbarons.htm

http://www.banderasnews.com/0708/nz-mexmonopoly.htm