Carlos Slim Helú was born in Mexico City in 1940 to Lebanese immigrant parents and trained as a civil engineer before building Grupo Carso through systematic acquisitions of undervalued Mexican businesses in the 1970s and 1980s. His most consequential bet was the 1990 privatization of Teléfonos de México, which became the foundation of América Móvil — for decades the dominant mobile operator across Latin America.
He has been consistently ranked among the wealthiest individuals in the world and his holdings span telecommunications, mining, infrastructure, banking, retail and media. He is also a substantial philanthropist through the Carlos Slim Foundation, with programmes in health, education and digital access across Latin America.
Slim is widely regarded as the most influential single figure in the Mexican private sector of the past half-century.