The world's richest man

MEXICO CITY—The Mexican tycoon who might just be the world's richest man almost never uses computers. Instead, Carlos Slim crunches numbers on a spreadsheet he created and has scrawled in a tattered notebook.
Through this data table, Slim determined that Babe Ruth was the greatest hitter ever. The obsessive scholar of baseball prefers the old days. His all-time top 10 includes no player of the past 50 years.

Slim prefers old movies, too, such as "El Cid," about a Spanish nobleman who became a heroic military leader and shook up society. In that era, "the good guys were good," Slim explained, "and the bad guys were bad."

Few alternate between the white and black hats more than Latin America's most powerful businessman. In a rare, two-hour interview the other day with the Tribune, he took time off from running his $60 billion empire to share his views on money, life and his legacy.

He wonders whether he will be remembered as the modern-day version of the tycoons who ran American monopolies during the Rockefeller era or as a philanthropist who promises to leave billions of dollars to help alleviate social problems.

Slim, 68, is virtually unknown in the U.S. but is a polarizing figure here. A recent book postulated that it is impossible for an ordinary Mexican to go 24 hours without putting money in his pocket.

Critics say his fortune was built through political favors, and that his telecommunications empire is one of several virtual monopolies that hold back the economy and are harmful to ordinary Mexicans because they keep prices high.

Depending on stock prices, Slim on some days is the world's richest man, jockeying with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. That wealth can attract an unflattering spotlight, including an investigation by Mexican antitrust regulators announced last week. But he also has started to win praise throughout Latin America for building a new model of development-based philanthropy.

Slim said he cares little about the increased scrutiny or even the praise. Famously elusive, he gruffly protested as a photographer tried to take his picture during his interview, consenting only at the end.

"I think it is important to have a conscience at peace," he said. "Like they say, you are a bullfighter not for the public but for the bull."

The descendant of Lebanese immigrants, Slim says his father, a successful merchant, introduced him to money by giving him a book in which he tracked his savings account. By age 12 he bought his first stock—in Banco Nacional de Mexico—and began tracking the market.

An engineer who later taught algebra and linear programming in college, Slim says he is fascinated with numbers, which fuels his passion for baseball.

News Source : Samachar