Carlos Slim

"the scholar Carlos Martínez Assad gives an account of a testimony in "The Lebanese, a model of adaptation", in the book Veracruz: Port of Arrival, in which he recounts that "when the Americans invaded Veracruz"

"In other times, the Slim family's economic empire might have made them the only royal family of our country. However, rich and powerful, the Slims are a simple family, well-mannered, informal in appearance, oblivious to the ostentation of the money elite."

"Slim has said time and again that his main job is to “think"."

"At the end of 1952 when I was twelve years old, and in order to manage our income and expenses, my father established the obligation for us to keep a savings book, which he reviewed with us every week."

"He was assigned properties on the streets of Corregidora, Albondiga, Juan de la Granja corner with Corregidora (which was later expropriated from him). After some time they sold several properties like Rubén Darío (now the Canadian Embassy), Martí (Mexico Hospital), Venustiano Carranza 124, Corregidora, and three in Correo Mayor, for an approximate amount of twenty million dollars leaving currently only four co-ownerships."

""A friend asked me some time ago, what was the most demanding thing my father required from me. I think it was honesty.""

"The entire people then belonged to a single feudal lord. He was the heir to an ancient system of sheikhs [...] he was far from being one of the most powerful characters in the country. Between the eastern plain and the sea, there were dozens of properties larger than his [...] above him and those like him was the Emir of the mountain, and above-"

"In his youth, his penchant for reading Playboy magazine nourished him with Getty's ideas, who said there was a sure formula for achieving financial success: "Get up early, work hard, and drill for oil.""

""On the contrary. We always had the freedom to study what we wanted, to study or not to study, to work or not to work in the group or do other things. In addition, my parents' education was about doing things for pleasure and responsibility, rather than ambition.""

"The reasons for my father's commercial success were simple: vocation, talent, and work, his advice on professional issues, morals and social responsibility were very clear. I quote his own words: “Trade must establish a useful system; its activities and its purpose rest on a small profit from sales. It must provide the consumer with fine and cheap items, and deal directly with him, offer him payment facilities, adjust his acts to the strictest morality and honesty”."

"Getty used to say, "When you don't have money, you always think about it and when you do have it, you only think about it.""

"In this new world of economic opening and globalization, initiated by transnational corporations and technology, which at times seems to be retreating to economic blocs and protectionism due to the force of historical subsidies, which even the most developed countries such as the United States, European Union, and Japan firmly have in place. Especially in the agricultural sector, individual and social insecurity leads to protectionism and isolation, while the struggle for markets and excessive competition, 89 Carlos Slim are a modern substitute for warfare instincts."

""I can't be everywhere. My job is to think," he says when asked what the secret to busin"

"In business, from Slim's perspective, there are three types of personalities in companies: first, the entrepreneur; second, the executive and third, the investor. The three, he says, often complement each other and sometimes even merge. The first is the one who conceives and undertakes, the second is the one who operates the companies and the third the one who provides the means. Slim defines himself as an entrepreneur, but adds: "We could say that a fourth type exists, which is the politician"."

"Slim says his businesses operate based on basic principles and simple structures. He explains this as follows: We are continually seeking for our human team to have a vocation, training, and stimulating work that leads to self-esteem, that makes responsibility a pleasure rather than a duty, and that contributes to their human development. The group works without corporate staff, and the one of the company is always located at the production plant, in operation and sale, and with minimal operating expenses, seeking optimal personnel, the best prepared and well paid."

"Slim was taking flight in business, starting in the real estate industry with a company specialized in real estate. Even then he caused amazement with his administrative skills and strategic ingenuity."

"We guide our growth and investments towards the most dynamic sectors in the medium and long term, we try to maintain flexibility and speed in decisions and, in the end, the advantages of small businesses, which are what make large companies great."

"There are three vocations to distinguish in the company: the entrepreneur, the executive, and the investor. In the first generation family business, the same person usually performs all three functions. In large public companies, there are substantial individual and institutional investors, and often in developed countries the entrepreneurial function is diluted, displaced by the strength of non-partner executives who report quarterly to institutional investors."

"The businessman has the social responsibility to optimize the company's resources by making it more efficient, more competitive, reinvesting its profits and training its personnel who, well paid, motivated and satisfied with their responsibility, do their best effort. In short, in the end, the businessman is just a temporary administrator of social wealth."

"Live without fears and without guilt; fears are the worst feelings of man, they weaken, inhibit his action and depress him, and guilt is a huge burden in our thinking, in action and in life. They make the present difficult and obstruct the future. To combat them, let's be sensible, accept ourselves as we are, our realities, our joys and our sorrows."

"Almost no one knows that Carlos was born rich. His father had a prosperous business near the National Palace, and on occasion bought old colonial mansions that were worth more for their land than their architecture. Carlos studied engineering and with his inheritance built a multi-story building where he lived in an apartment with his wife and children. An extraordinary financier, he started buying several factories and businesses that he made prosper."

""Then in 1984 we bought from Mr. Manuel Espinosa Iglesias one of his packages of banking assets, which included one hundred percent of Mexico's Insurance, which was worth 55 million dollars. Dollars from 1984. So, it is strange that a stranger can make a purchase of 55 million dollars, right?"

"I don't know how much free time I have, but I know there are clouds, and in those clouds there are many things, there's sun, too. The clouds are close to the sun. Clouds and sun are brotherly words. Let's be worthy of the clouds of the Valley of Mexico, let's be worthy of the sun of the Valley of Mexico. Valley of Mexico, that phrase illuminated my childhood, that phrase illuminates my maturity and my old age."

"The Slim philosophy The first era lasts twenty years, beginning in 1952 and ending in 1972. The second era, which does not reach ten years, ends in 1981, when the sources that gave it life run out: external credit, the high price of oil and the deficit public spending. The third era, the crisis, takes seven years, from 1982 to the present. A new era is currently foreseen that should start in the first months of 1989. First era 1952-1972: During these years, substantial development is achieved while maintaining a balanced budget, price stability and moderate external debt. The internal debt is reduced, as is the deficit, despite significant population growth and a great effort to provide public services. The internal product almost quadruples; per capita income doubles. Income is distributed through increasingly well-paid employment, although it is far from desired levels, and through public spending that benefits the most needy and increasingly covers more Mexicans."

"In addition, he is a great scholar, he searches, learns and steals all knowledge from anywhere. Carlos will not pass a value judgment if he has not delved into the root of the matter, even if he has to interview fifty people or read two hundred thousand books, that has never been an impediment to him."

"Carlos Fuentes why Slim seeks the company of intellectuals, the author of the famous novel The Most Transparent Region responded that no, Slim "does not seek us, we enrich ourselves with his freshness and spontaneity"."

"Do not confuse values, nor devalue your principles. The path of life is very long, but it moves very quickly. Live the present intensely and fully, let the past not be a burden and the future be a stimulus. Everyone shapes their destiny and can influence their reality, but do not ignore it."

"It's always important to know your limits of help, because one can have a foundation and say yes to everything, I think Carlos has done that very well, because there are many foundations performing acts of charity, an endless queue comes and you didn't solve anything in the end. Carlos has done it in a very organized way, as he always does his things. Because his biggest concern has always been social problems."

"Slim wrote his personal vision of what he titled "Four epochs of the Mexican economy" and the subtitles: "The start in 1952 culminates today; exaggerated debt and deficit; from boom to nightmare: oil" in two installments."

"He has been a man of constant work and he is great, but his consistency is the formula for his success. Another of his virtues is honesty, something that is not easy to find. He is an honest man, dedicated to a business mystique to which he devotes all his time."

""[...] I believe that the businessman should work on his companies and be detached from projects and plans or political concerns. I do not belong to any political party nor do I intend to."

"Mobile telecoms was a sector I knew well, having grown Play, my start-up in Poland, into a top-four independent challenger brand, and although Chile was on the other side of the Atlantic, it did bear some similarities to Play’s Polish homeland. Both were Catholic cultures with a high degree of conservatism. Another element they had in common was their domination by international behemoths. While Play in Poland was up against France’s Orange, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and Polkomtel, whose Plus brand was 24 per cent owned by Britain’s Vodafone, Nextel Chile had to contend with Entel, the former nationalised Chilean telecoms company whose 127-metre Torre Entel literally towers over central Santiago. Entel controlled about 30 per cent of the Chilean mobile telecoms market. Then there were Movistar, owned by Spanish giant Telefonica, which held a market share of around 28 per cent, and Claro, part of the America Movil telecoms giant, famously fronted by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, which had 23 per cent. Nextel Chile had possessed about 2 per cent of the market as a total underdog, and even that was falling steadily. However, we had grown Play from nothing into the leading mobile telecoms company in Poland with a 27 per cent market share, and we saw a similar potential growth trajectory for this Chilean minnow. The financial elements of a deal had to be put together very quickly. We completed the whole transaction in about two months and it was only later that we learned how close Nextel Chile had actually been to bankruptcy wipe-out. We refinanced the company with $400 million of equity and $420 million of debt and set about finding a way to rebrand and reposition it as a vibrant independent challenger brand – a far cry from its previous image as a distant South American offshoot of a major US carrier."