Contents
In 2015, Carlos Slim became the largest shareholder of the New York Times after he bailed the paper out with a $250 million loan in 2009 and made an agreement to allow him to buy cheap stock options at a later date. 6
Carlos Slim was listed as a “Titan” in TIME magazine’s 2025 list of the 100 most influential people in philanthropy. 7
Background
Carlos Slim Helu is a billionaire business magnate from Mexico. He became wealthy through his acquisition of the formerly government-run telecommunications company Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex). He spun off its mobile telephone division, known as America Movil, in 2001, effectively giving his company control over the country’s mobile telecommunications industry. He continued to expand his business empire through acquiring stakes in real estate, commercial banking, energy companies, construction (through his family investment firm Grupo Carso), mining, and consumer goods. In 2023, America Movil reported revenue of $46 billion. 5 8 6 9
Slim was ranked as the richest man in the world from 2010 to 2013. 1 2 3 4 As of 2025, he remained the richest man in Mexico with a fortune estimated at approximately $92 billion. 5
Activities
In 2009, the New York Times was facing a debt crisis and was going to be forced to refinance; the Sulzberger family, which controlled the company at the time, did not want to sell it. Instead, they accepted a $250 million loan at 14 percent interest from Carlos Slim. Slim also had them agree to give him the option of buying a large chunk of its stock, locked in at the cheap price of $6.35 a share, in the future. 10 The decision made some unhappy: a correspondent for the Times who had covered Mexico considered Slim to be a symbol of Mexican crony capitalism. “Slim is the consummate monopolist,” the reporter told the New Yorker. “Does being embroiled in a business culture of back-scratching and unseen forces make him a great partner for the Times? I don’t think so.” 11
In January 2015, Slim cashed in on his stock option; because the stock was then worth $12.60, he earned $100 million and came to own roughly 17 percent of the company. But he did not sell the last of it until 2020, tripling his investment. 10 According the New York Times, Slim became the single largest shareholder of the company when he increased his stake to 16.8 percent in 2015. 6 12 13 Slim would sell roughly half his holdings in Times stock in 2017. 14
In a 2020 speech to employees, owner A.G. Sulzberger referred to paying off $256 million owed to Slim as the moment “when we officially closed the book on one difficult chapter of our history and began a new one filled with promise.” 10
Philanthropy
In 1986, Carlos Slim founded the Carlos Slim Foundation (Fundacion Carlos Slim) to distribute grants to various forms of what the organization terms “social responsibility,” covering areas like education, health, social justice, culture, disaster relief, economic development, and environmentalism. 15 7
As of 2025, the Foundation had given away over $4 billion since its founding, mainly supporting causes in Latin America. Slim is one of the most active philanthropists in Mexico. 7
The Carlos Slim Foundation operates the Mesoamerica Health Initiative, a medical care philanthropy project for women and children that is partnered with organizations like the Gates Foundation. The project celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2025. 16
It also runs the Get Trained for Employment (Capacitate para el Empleo) program, an online educational platform that trains people for new jobs. The program has been said to reflect Slim’s belief that job creation, not welfare, is the key to philanthropy. 17 7
Slim was listed as a “Titan” in TIME magazine’s 2025 list of the 100 most influential people in philanthropy. 18
Criticism
Carlos Slim has declined to sign Warren Buffett’s “Giving Pledge,” an agreement among billionaires to pledge at least 50 percent of their wealth to philanthropic causes, because it went against his belief that wealth redistribution will not solve societal problems. He has said, “What they have to donate is their work, their dedication to solving society’s problems, not make [just financial] donations.” This decision was noted as “perhaps controversial” by TIME magazine, which also mentioned previous criticism he had received regarding his “monopolistic hold” over telecommunications in Mexico. 7
In March 2025, Elon Musk retweeted a post on X (formerly Twitter) arguing that anyone who amasses such a large fortune in Mexico as Slim has must have a connection to drug cartels and organized crime. Musk and Slim had already been at odds, but this post led Slim to rescind his investment in Musk’s satellite internet company Starlink and redirect $22 billion into a different network. 19 20