Carlos Slim Helú (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkaɾlos esˈlim eˈlu]; born January 28, 1940) is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world  Known as the “Warren Buffett of Mexico”,  Slim oversees a vast business empire that is influential in every sector of the Mexican economy and accounts for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange. He derived his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso The conglomerate comprises a diverse portfolio of businesses from a wide array of industries that include telecommunications, education, health care, industrial manufacturing, food and beverages, real estate, airlines, media, mining, oil, hospitality, entertainment, technology, retail, sports and financial services. Slim is the chairman and chief executive of telecommunications companies Telmex and América Móvil.

América Móvil, which was Latin America’s largest mobile-phone carrier in 2010, accounted for around $49 billion of Slim’s wealth by the end of that year As of 3 November 2015 he was #2 on Forbes list of billionaires, with net worth estimated at $63.5 billion.  His net worth is equivalent to about 6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product.

Personal life

Slim was married to Soumaya Domit from 1967 until her death in 1999. Among her interests were various philanthropic projects, including the creation of a legal framework for organ donation.

 

Slim has six children: Carlos, Marco Antonio, Patrick, Soumaya, Vanessa, and Johanna. Slim’s fortune has given rise to a family business empire and he often acquires shares on behalf of himself and his children. His three older sons serve in key positions in the companies controlled by Slim where most are involved in the day-to-day running of Slim’s business empire.  Slim underwent heart surgery in 1999.  In high school, Slim’s favorite subjects were history, cosmography, and mathematics.

In his office, Slim does not keep a computer and instead prefers to keep all his financial data in thoroughly kept notebooks  Slim is well versed in technology but prefers to write by hand instead of on a computer Due to the vast size of his business empire, Slim often jokes that he can’t keep track of all the companies he manages.

 

Real estate

Slim lives in a 6-bedroom home in the Lomas de Chapultepec district of Mexico City,  close to where he grew up, that has been his residence for over 40 years. Slim’s real estate holding company Inmobiliaria Carso develops, invests, owns and operates many residential and commercial properties across Mexico. The company owns over 20 shopping centers, including ten in Mexico City, and operates stores in the country under U.S. brands including the Mexican arms of Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears and the Coffee Factory. Slim has been making private real estate investments around the world, particularly in the United States. He has been reported to have acquired 417 Fifth Avenue, an 11-story office tower for $140 million and also a piece of the former New York Times building on West 43rd street. He controls approximately 8 acres of prime Beverly Hills real estate at the corner of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards  In May 2014 Slim opened Inbursa Aquarium, Latin America’s largest aquarium. lim owns the Duke Seamans mansion, a 1901 beaux arts house on 5th Avenue in New York City, which he bought for $44 million in 2010. The mansion is 20,000 square feet and has 12 bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and a doctor’s office in the basement.  In May 2015, he listed the property up for sale at $80 million, nearly twice what he paid. In April 2015, Slim bought the Marquette Building in Detroit and purchased PepsiCo Americas Beverages headquarters in Somers, New York for $87 million. Slim owns a second mansion in New York City at 10 W. 56th St, which he leased early in 2015 to the John Barrett Salon for $1.5 million annually. The property was bought in 2011 for $15.5 million.

Philanthropy

Slim has been publicly skeptical of The Giving Pledge by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett giving away at least half of their fortunes. But—according to his spokesman—he devoted $4 billion, or roughly 5%, to his Carlos Slim foundation as of 2011  Though Slim has not gone as far as Gates and Buffett in pledging more than half of his fortune, Slim has expressed firm support for philanthropy and has advised budding entrepreneurs that businessmen must do more than give — they “should participate in solving problems”. Slim has channeled his philanthropic endeavors into many initiatives such as funding a genomic medicine research project, subsidizing numerous arts and education projects in Mexico City, including the Museo Soumaya (named after his late wife), which displays his art collection for no admission fee.

Slim founded three nonprofit foundations concentrating on Mexico City: one for the arts, education, and health care; one for sports; and one for downtown restoration.

Fundación Carlos Slim Helú

Established in 1986 Fundación Carlos Slim Helú sponsors the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City, named after Slim’s late wife, Soumaya Domit, opened 2011. It holds 66,000 pieces, including religious relics, contains the world’s second-largest collection of Rodin sculptures, including The Kiss, the largest Dalí collection in Latin America, works by Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and coins from the viceroys of Spain  The inauguration in 2011 was attended by the President of Mexico, Nobel Prize laureates, writers and other celebrities.

After stating that he had donated $4 billion of dividends to Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, $2 billion in 2006, and another $2 billion in 2010, Slim was ranked fifth in Forbes’ World’s Biggest Givers in May 2011. Education and health care projects have included $100 million to perform 50,000 cataract surgeries in Peru through the Clinton Initiative, a $20 million fund to strengthen small and medium-size businesses in Colombia, and a digital education program for youth in Mexico, $150 million for programs in nutrition and disease prevention in Central America with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the government of Spain, $50 million to work with the World Wildlife Fund on restoration of six areas for species in Mexico, including the monarch butterfly and $100 million on education programs for young people through Colombian singer Shakira’s Alas Foundation.

Fundación Telmex

In 1995 Slim established Fundación Telmex, a broad-ranging philanthropic foundation, which as he announced in 2007 had been provided with an asset base of $4 billion to establish Carso Institutes for Health, Sports and Education. Furthermore, it was to work in support of an initiative of Bill Clinton to aid the people of Latin America.Because Mexican foundations are not required to publish their financial information, it is not possible to confirm Slim’s claims of charitable giving through a public source.  The foundation has organized Copa Telmex, an amateur sports tournament, recognized in 2007 and 2008 by Guinness World Records as having the most participants of any such tournament in the world. Together with Fundación Carlos Slim Helú, Telmex announced in 2008 that it was to invest more than $250 million in Mexican sports programs, from grass-roots level to Olympic standard  Telmex sponsored the Sauber F1 team for the 2011 season.

Fundación del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México A.C.

In 2000, Slim and ex-broadcaster Jacobo Zabludowsky organized the Fundación del Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México A.C. (Mexico City Historic Center Foundation) to revitalize and rescue Mexico City’s historic downtown area to enable more people to live, work and find entertainment there. He has been Chair of the Council for the Restoration of the Historic Downtown of Mexico City since 2001.

In 2011 he, along with the president of Mexico, Mexico City mayor, and Mexico City archbishop, inaugurated the first phase of Plaza Mariana close to Basilica de Guadalupe. The complex, whose construction was funded by Slim, includes an evangelization center, museum, columbarium, health center, and market.

Carlos Slim invested more than $800 million in the Soumaya Museum, the second museum opened by the telecommunications mogul. Here, he stands with Auguste Rodin’s The Three Shades on March 28, the eve of the opening.

“Carlos Slim is one of the worlds most important philanthropists and most people have never heard about his humanitarian activities. He owns stock in more than 200 companies that employ more than 200,000 people in Latin America and beyond. He has used his resources to help develop the communities where his businesses are located. In his own country, Mexico, he has personally supported more than 165,000 young people in attending university, paid for numerous surgeries, provided equipment for rural schools and covered surety bonds for 50,000 people who were entitled to their freedom but could not afford. He recently created the Carso Institute for Health, and designed it to provide a new approach to health care in Mexico. He has four billion dollars of investments ready to promote education, health and other great challenges, and has recently announced an additional six billion dollar investment in several programs, including his Telmex Foundation.” Speech by Mr. Carlos Slim Helú,

Chairman of the Carlos Slim Foundation

Aquarium Inbursa opening speech by Carlos Slim

Located in Plaza Carso, a few steps from the Soumaya Museum, the Jumex Museum and the Telcel Theater, Inbursa’s Aquarium

will open its doors on June 11. Visitors will be able to live an entertaining and educational experience ranging from the bottom of the ocean to exotic mangroves. Over 5 thousand samples of more than 230 species are featured, including sharks, seahorses, turtles, crocodiles, piranhas, jellyfish, corals, and barracudas, among many others. They are showcased in 48 different exhibition settings covering a surface of 3,500 square meters, distributed in a 4 level underground structure. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has just added a new asset to his business and entertainment empire: a 5,000 marine animal aquarium. Aquarium Inbursa, inaugurated on May 30, features 230 species of sea life and occupies 11,500 square feet in Mexico City. During the inauguration by Mexico City’s Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, accompanied by Slim and Alejandro Nasta, the aquarium’s director, the world’s second richest man said that the aquarium will offer entertainment, culture, employment, housing and a better quality of life for what was previously a derelict area of the city. Mancera pointed out that the aquarium, which will open to the public on June 10 and has an entry fee of around $10, is not only the largest in Mexico, but one of the largest in the world, comparable to those in Atlanta, Shanghai, Dubai and London.

In 2011, Slim opened Soumaya Museum ,named after his late wife

which holds 66,000 works of art by some of the best known European artists from the 15th through the 20th century.

With over one million international visitors in its first year, and 2.6 million visitors in total the Soumaya Museum is a great success.

The museum does not charge an entrance fee.

The majority of the art consists of European works from the 15th to the 20th century. It also holds Mexican art, religious relics, and historical documents and coins. The museum contains the world’s largest collection of pre-Hispanic and colonial era coins. It also holds the largest collection of casts of sculptures by Auguste Rodin outside of France, and the world’s largest private collection of his art. Slim owns a total of 380 casts and works of art by Rodin. His late wife, whom he credits with teaching him much of what he knows about art, was an admirer of Rodin’s work.In addition to Rodin, some notable European artists whose work is displayed include Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, the circle of Leonardo da Vinci, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Joan Miró, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, El Greco, and Tintoretto.

The most valuable work of art in the collection is believed to be a version of Madonna of the Yarnwinder by a member of the circle of Leonardo da Vinci. Another version of the same painting has been valued at over £30 Million.

Several Mexican artists are also featured, including Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo. The director of the museum has claimed that the total worth of the art it holds is over $700 million.
Rooms

• Entrance: This foyer area is an asymmetric, high-ceiling vestibule. This space is devoted to temporary exhibitions, events and permanently exhibits four large-format works: The Thinker by Auguste Rodin, Río Juchitán the last mural by Diego Rivera, Still life by Rufino Tamayo, Day and night by Rufino Tamayo and Pieta, cast in bronze in the 19th century from the marble by Michelangelo Buonarroti.
• Level 1: Gold and silver: decorative arts. Collection of coins, medals and banknotes dating from the Viceroyalty to the post-revolutionary era. There are also objects in ivory, silk and precious stones for religious and civil use.
• Level 2: Temporary exhibitions
• Level 3: European and Novohispanic Old Masters. Works of European artists such as the Cranachs, Tintoretto, el Greco, Rubens, Artemisia Gentileschi and Murillo, with Colonial works by Villalpando, Juárez, Cabrera and Páez, among others.
• Level 4: From Impressionism to the Avant-garde. Landscape and costumbrist works of 19th-century Mexico by Chapman, Rugendas, Egerton, Linati, Baron Gros, Löhr, Landesio and Velasco together with works from the European movements and vanguards, by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Vlaminck, Chagall and Miró.
• Level 5: (temporary) : “Sophia Loren. México. Ayer, hoy y mañana”. Objects, scripts, clothes, awards, photographs and magazines from the personal collection of the Italian actress.
• Level 6: Julián and Linda Slim / The Rodin Era. Works by Rodin and his pupils such as Camille Claudel and Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, together with surrealist sculptures by Salvador Dalí.

Underneath 2 Van Gogh paitings which are in the museum.

Van Gogh: Shepherd with a Flock of Sheep

Van Gogh: Cottage with Peasant Coming Home
If you are interest in offering art to Museo Soumaya please contact me, i have earlier been in contact with the museum.I also regularly write to the people surrounding Mr. Slim about investments.