Mexico’s Ten Billionaires (According to the Forbes List)

Forbes mag­a­zine recently pub­lished its annual list of bil­lion­aires. The 2008 list is based on the bil­lion­aires’ net worth on Feb­ru­ary 11^th, 2008.

Accord­ing to Forbes, the world’s wealth­i­est man is Berk­shire Hath­away investor War­ren Buf­fet, at US$62 bil­lion. In sec­ond place is Mex­i­can tele­coms tycoon Car­los Slim, at US$60 bil­lion. In third place is Bill Gates, with US$58 billion.

In cal­cu­lat­ing such wealth, a lot depends on how much each man’s stock is cur­rently worth.  In August of 2007, For­tune mag­a­zine had actu­ally named Slim as the world’s rich­est man.

Still, when you’re talk­ing about this kind of money what’s a bil­lion here or there?  Accord­ing to Forbes, only a measly US$2 bil­lion sep­a­rates Buf­fet and Slim, and Slim and Gates.

In Mex­ico, a coun­try in which about half the pop­u­la­tion lives under the poverty line, where the per capita income is less than US$7,000.00, Forbes lists ten bil­lion­aires. Let’s take a brief look at each.

At US$60 bil­lion, Car­los Slim is by far the rich­est Mex­i­can.  The man known as “King Midas,” or “The Engi­neer,” really made it into the big leagues back in 1990 when he bought Telmex (Telé­fonos de Méx­ico) dur­ing Pres­i­dent Car­los Sali­nas’ pri­va­ti­za­tions (though many would call them crony cap­i­tal­iza­tions).  Telmex con­trols over 90% of Mexico’s land­lines.  Slim also has Tel­cel (which con­trols almost 80% of the Mex­i­can cel­lu­lar phone mar­ket) and América Móvil, Latin America’s biggest wire­less provider.

But Car­los Slim is not lim­ited to telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and related indus­tries. This guy sells every­thing, and it’s doubt­ful that any res­i­dent of Mex­ico can escape putting more money in his already volu­mi­nous pock­ets.  Slim has a bank, an air­line, depart­ment stores, restau­rants and music out­lets.  Slim sells insur­ance, auto parts, and ceramic tile.  The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment pays Slim to con­struct roads, water treat­ment plants, petro­leum plat­forms, etc.

All of Slim’s hold­ings put together equal 6.3 per­cent of Mexico’s entire annual eco­nomic output.

The second-richest Mex­i­can (and the world’s 85^th rich­est man) is Alberto Bailleres, chair­man of Indus­trias Peñoles, the huge met­al­lur­gi­cal com­pany that refines gold, lead and zinc.  Bailleres also has stock in the lux­ury depart­ment store El Pala­cio de Hierro, and in insurance.

At US$7.3 bil­lion, the third-wealthiest Mex­i­can is lum­ber and min­ing mag­nate Ger­man Lar­rea Mota-Velasco of Grupo Méx­ico. This com­pany mines zinc, sil­ver and lead, and has been helped by the ris­ing price of cop­per.  This gen­tle­man also con­trols Mexico’s biggest railroad.

Ricardo Sali­nas Pliego is worth US$6.3 bil­lion.  Sali­nas Pliego runs the Grupo Elek­tra retailer and the TV Azteca net­work. Sali­nas Pliego is tak­ing on Slim head to head with his mobile car­rier Une­fon, and he has opened his own bank as part of the Elek­tra chain which mostly serves low-income clients.  Elek­traalso sells Chi­nese cars.  

Jeron­imo Arango is the fifth-richest Mex­i­can, worth US$4.3 bil­lion.  Arango’s fam­ily busi­ness was the Bodega Aur­rerasuper­mar­ket chain, part of Grupo Cifra, which sold out to Wal-mart and became Wal-mart de Méx­ico (Walmex). Arango also owns real estate.

Isaac Saba Raf­foul, worth US$2.1 bil­lion, runs Grupo Casa Sabawhich mar­kets health, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and beauty prod­ucts. Saba also part­ners with Tele­mu­ndo to pro­duce telen­ov­e­las.

Roberto Her­nan­dez is the seventh-wealthiest Mex­i­can, and he is worth US$1.7 bil­lion.  Her­nan­dez was CEO of Banamex when that bank sold out to Cit­i­group, for which he serves as a direc­tor. Her­nan­dez also owns resorts on the Yucatan Peninsula.

Emilio Azcar­raga Jean is worth US$1.6 bil­lion, and runs media giant Grupo Tele­visa, famous for, among other things, its telen­ov­e­las that the com­pany is now mak­ing ver­sions of in Chinese.

Worth US$1.6 bil­lion, Alfredo Harp Helu is Car­los Slim’s cousin. Like Her­nan­dez, Harp made big bucks off the Cit­i­group sell-out, and also owns the Mex­ico City Red Dev­ils base­ball team.

Mexico’s tenth-richest man, Lorenzo Zam­brano, is head of cement giant Cemex, which is, by the way, the biggest cement com­pany oper­at­ing in the U.S.A., and one of the world’s biggest.

There may well be other Mex­i­can bil­lion­aires who don’t report all their earn­ings, or hide assets in hold­ing com­pa­nies.  But these are the ten Mex­i­can bil­lion­aires rec­og­nized by Forbes mag­a­zine in March of 2008.

Is it bad that Mex­ico has bil­lion­aires?  Not nec­es­sar­ily.  Their wealth, after all, is an asset that can be uti­lized in pro­vid­ing more jobs.  With this said how­ever, I think all ten of these bil­lion­aires could do much bet­ter at gen­er­at­ing employ­ment for their fel­low Mexicans.