Peso overtakes Dollar! Actually read Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim overtakes Microsoft founder Bill Gates. This bit of news is not a rumor as it is based on the fact that a 27% surge in the share price of America Movil, Latin America’s largest cell phone operator controlled by Slim, from March to June made him close to $8.6 billion wealthier than Gates. Slim’s riches are estimated at estimated $67.8 billion while Gates was worth $59.2 billion. Way back in April, Forbes magazine reported in April that Slim had overtaken billionaire investor Warren Buffett for the No. 2 spot in the world’s richest stakes but was still behind Gates. Slim, known for his Midas touch in turning around struggling businesses and turning them into profit-making machines, told Reuters in an interview this year he was not in the habit of calculating his fortune on a regular basis. Modesty speaks! One reason for Slim’s meteoric rise might be because he is also still working.
Here’s some factual tit-bits on the world’s richest man – Slim, the son of Lebanese immigrants, has had business in his blood from his early days when he helped out in his father’s shop, “The Star of the Orient.” The 67-year-old started out in real estate and was already affluent enough when he graduated from university with an engineering degree to buy stakes in a stock brokerage and a bottling firm. Widowed in 1999, Slim has boosted his philanthropic presence and overseen his three sons’ careers within his business empire. Like Gates, he has developed a strong profile on the philanthropic front. Did you know that World Bank data states fifty-three percent of Mexico’s population of 104 million live in poverty, which is defined as living on less than two dollars a day? What a contradictory fact!
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