Carlos Slim Helu

Carlos Slim Helu- "When there is a crisis, that’s when some are interested in getting out and that’s when we are interested in getting in."


When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.

Carlos Slim Helu

When we decide to do something, we do it quickly.

Carlos Slim Helu

I think when you are involved in a business first of all; you need to know the business. After you know the business, you can let the numbers tell you what is happening.

Carlos Slim Helu

When there is a crisis, that’s when some are interested in getting out and that’s when we are interested in getting in.

Carlos Slim Helu

Money is not a goal. The goal is to make companies grow, develop, be competitive, be in different areas, be efficient to have a great human team inside the company.

Carlos Slim Helu

I think the wealth should be reinvested to create more wealth. The fruit of wealth is income and it is important to develop the distribution of income.

Carlos Slim Helu

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

Carlos Slim Helu

In ’82, there was a big crisis in Mexico and that meant that nobody was investing. And we invested in paper; we invested in tires for cars, we invested in auto parts and aluminum and copper combustion. Actually we were focusing.

Carlos Slim Helu

When we do profitable business, we don’t get crazy; putting expenses all around or making fancy things. Then, we didn’t have corporate offices until now.

Carlos Slim Helu

I am convinced that all this poverty in Mexico and in Latin America, like it’s happening in China is the opportunity to grow. It’s an opportunity for investment; it’s an economic activity and to take out poverty is the best investment any person or a person can do in any place.

Carlos Slim Helu

Some people are very good with letters and others have a good grasp of numbers. You can manage numbers in different ways; you read the numbers and you understand what is happening in the companies.

Carlos Slim Helu

I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization.

Carlos Slim Helu

Our concept is more to accomplish and solve things, rather than giving, that is, not going around like Santa Claus. Poverty isn’t solved with donations.

Carlos Slim Helu

We think that there will be an “entrepreneurial reconversion” of many companies that have lived in the industrial era and now are becoming part of this new (digital) civilization.

Carlos Slim Helu

I believe that if a businessman knows how to efficiently manage his business, he should be able to manage a foundation efficiently. It’s not a question of giving money away, it’s a question of going somewhere and doing something and making sure the basic costs are paid…I’m channeling resources to try to solve problems as quickly as possible.

Carlos Slim Helu

I’m a paper man, not electronic. My children gave me a lap top for Christmas, but all I know how to do so far is push the on button.

Carlos Slim Helu

Building a business and becoming a billionaire is it’s not championship. It’s the competence; the competence in your sector with other companies not looking to have some kind of records in this issue.

Carlos Slim Helu

Technology is going to transform people’s lives and society everywhere in the world. I spend most of my time studying new technologies. My main task is to understand what’s going on and try to see where we can fit in.

Carlos Slim Helu

It’s not going to exist in a few years. It’s going to disappear, and it will be the same thing to make a local call as a long-distance call. So we have to move into other areas.

Carlos Slim Helu

I really don’t care about my ration. What they do is know how much share of the companies that we have investments and we are managing, and has the market price. The market price changes everyday, every time with a lot of volatility and you cannot make balance sheets of what is happening.

Carlos Slim Helu

I think that anything that has privileges has responsibility. All this is responsibility and compromise.

Carlos Slim Helu

It’s not a question of arriving [at a new company] and putting in a whole new administration but instead, arriving and ‘compacting’ things as much as possible, reducing management layers.

Carlos Slim Helu

Compromise and responsibility are not only for me and my family, but also the management team to have the responsibility to know the importance of what we are doing and that at the end of temporarily managing this; we don’t take anything when we pass away.

Carlos Slim Helu

We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don’t believe in having big corporate infrastructures.

Carlos Slim Helu

We have to do is seek the best for our shareholders.

Carlos Slim Helu

Those who say that I am taking over the city centre that I have already bought up everything, are not going to stop me from continuing my project.

Carlos Slim Helu

The buying power of Americans is so much higher than Mexicans.

Carlos Slim Helu

I’ve always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others. Just as I think it’s important to run companies well, with a close eye to the bottom line, I think you have to use your entrepreneurial experience to make corporate philanthropy effective.

Carlos Slim Helu

How can we develop if we’re always stuck in crises?

Carlos Slim Helu

The American government, which is looking for something useful to do with its surplus, should consider it: There’s no better investment than promoting [Latin America's] development. They shouldn’t do it to be Good Samaritans, but for good business reasons… If the U.S. promotes education, it will be able to sell more products coming out of the new digital civilization.

Carlos Slim Helu