Global Leader Carlos Slim Helu - Telecom - Research Paper Example

How did such a young boy with no substantial wealth become the richest person in the whole world? Business men intend to be sharp and ruthless which he was but what made him so special that he remained the world’s richest person for three years even with the likes of Bill Gates breathing down his necks? Here we will try to analyze his approach to business and his worth ethics and strategies that have driven his tremendous success (forbes, n.p.). From an early age Carlos Slim showed exceptional ability in business related matters so his father who was an entrepreneur himself groomed him from an early stage.

His father had fled Lebanon along with his brothers to make a living in Mexico and he survived the competitive streets while making a name in business. Carlos Slim was also raised to be in the same mould of competitive behavior and as time showed that appeared to be his main attribute in achieving success. At the tender age of 12, he was handed his father’s real estate business which he co handed and did extraordinary work but his thoughts were focused on other things so he gained an engineering degree and became a stockbroker and worked his magic in the stock business for some while with huge profits so much that by the age of 26, his net worth was forty million dollars.

But due to his nature, he never wanted to be in the stock business for good rather he wanted to become a real business man with permanent interests in the leading industries of the world. His phenomenal rise by trading stocks and later in all the leading businesses that he started commanding benefited from his outrageous talent of organizing and mastery of discrete mathematics. His level in the mastery of numbers and linear programming (even though it had tedious application back in the 1960s) was considered unparalleled and unique.

It enabled him to understand the worth and the potential of several fields that were not so profitable in the early days of their conception like the now trillion dollar industries of telecom, tobacco and oil. After doing considerable research and numerical study, he decided to buy the second largest tobacco company Cigatem in Mexico back in 1981 which made Marlboro brand of cigarettes (Rubin, 99). With expansion and modernization, he transformed the company into huge profits which he used to buy into more companies and gain control.

Until now, Slim wasn’t in the elite circle of businessmen but from now onwards he began the real climb towards success. In 1982, the oil prices went downhill due to the expansion of the Middle East oil well business which affected the Mexican economy so the businesses began to tumble and he took advantage of the situation and made ridiculously good bargains. He also invested in the Mexican businesses in USA like Hershey Corporation and Reynolds Aluminum and earned mighty profits. He also invested in the Mexican financial services.

He was a true ruthless businessman and from now onwards he started making total monopolies and drove competitors away with relative ease. His monopoly of the communication industry is also evident of this fact with Telmex and Movil his primary concerns nowadays which he purchased dirt cheap and helped transform them into the largest telecom operators in the region just because of the insight he possessed. In the later part of eighties, he purchased more large companies that had major futures in Aluminum, copper and chemicals and expanded his business.