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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | September 2007 
Mexican Billionaire Opens Health Center
 BusinessWeek
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| | Mexican businessman Carlos Slim looks at his watch during the inauguration of a nonprofit health institute aimed at helping Latin America's poor in Mexico City, Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2007. The initiative is the latest in a series of charitable efforts over the years by Slim, who has been heavily criticized for his enormous wealth and alleged monopolistic business practices. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) |
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim - by some estimates the world's richest man - opened a $500 million health institute Tuesday aimed at helping Latin America's poor.
Based in Mexico City, the private, nonprofit center is the latest in a series of charitable efforts by Slim, who has been heavily criticized for alleged monopolistic business practices and for amassing enormous wealth even as 40 percent of Mexicans live in poverty.
The Carso Health Institute - named for Slim's industrial-retail conglomerate Grupo Carso SA - will focus on "families who are most in need," said institute chairman and Grupo Carso president Marco Antonio Slim, a son of the tycoon.
Few details were disclosed on how the institute will operate in Mexico and other countries, and Carlos Slim did not speak at the event.
Slim, a 67-year-old Mexican mogul of Lebanese descent, controls vast international holdings including Telefonos de Mexico SA, which operates more than 90 percent of the nation's fixed-line phone services.
Forbes magazine listed him in March as the world's second-richest man, with a net worth of $53 billion. But in June, the respected Mexican financial Web site Sentido Comun calculated that Slim's fortune had risen to $67.8 billion, topping Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates' $56 billion. |
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