Slim controls America Movil, the largest mobile-phone operator in Latin America. The Mexico City-based company had revenue of $46 billion in 2023. Slim also has stakes in commercial banks and energy companies. Through his family's investment vehicle Grupo Carso, he has interests in the Mexican construction industry.
The majority of Slim's fortune is derived from a handful of publicly traded companies. His most valuable asset is a majority shareholding in America Movil followed by his stakes in holding company Grupo Carso and banking and insurance firm Grupo Financiero Inbursa. He has stakes in more than a half dozen other public companies, many of which pay dividends. America Movil is the largest mobile-phone operator in Latin America, according to its 2023 annual report.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show Slim has transferred some of these stakes to his six children: sons Carlos, Patrick and Marco Antonio Slim Domit, and daughters Soumaya, Vanessa and Johanna. The shares are held directly or through Mexico City-based holding company Control Empresarial de Capitales and its subsidiaries. All assets are credited to Slim because he is the patriarch of the family fortune.
The valuation excludes shares held by the family's charitable foundations, Fundacion Telmex, Fundacion Carlos Slim and Instituto Carlos Slim de la Salud.
The Slim family owns part of its interest in certain companies through publicly traded Inbursa and its subsidiaries. These stakes are excluded from the sharecounts used in this analysis.
Slim has collected more than $20 billion in dividends from his investments, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of insider transactions, real estate purchases, market performance, investments, charitable giving and taxes.
Born to a Lebanese immigrant, Carlos Slim Helu received a civil engineering degree at the National Autonomous University of Mexico School of Engineering in 1961. At age 25, he started construction company Inmobiliaria Carso, and he invested during the Mexican debt crisis of the 1980s, buying interests in tobacco, copper and mining. He also bought the restaurant and retail chain Sanborn Hermanos. In the 1990s, he took control of Telmex, the state-owned telephone company, and Grupo Condumex, a manufacturer of wire and fiber-optic cable.
A decade later, he began acquiring mobile phone operations throughout Latin America under the banner of American Movil, which he merged with Telmex in 2011. He has given more than $3 billion to his charitable foundation. He's a baseball fan and a supporter of educational causes.