CARLOS SLIM

By DANIEL DOMBEY

In 1996 Carlos Slim, 57, prepared to survive the onslaught of foreign telecommunications competition in Mexico. This year many of those invaders, especially from the U.S., may learn whether they can survive Carlos Slim.

The biggest shareholder as well as chairman of Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex), Mexico's no-longer-monopoly telephone company, Slim is planning to challenge American giants like AT&T and MCI on their home turf in 1997. The stakes: a bigger share in the $2.5 billion U.S.-Mexico long-distance market. "Our focus is toward Hispanic users in the U.S.," he says. The notion of taking on mammoth American firms is in keeping with the ambitions of multibillionaire Slim, widely assumed to be Mexico's richest man. His Grupo Carso holding company was already worth $1.2 billion in sales in 1990 when, along with Southwestern Bell and France Telecom, he bought 20% of stodgy, state-owned Telmex for $1.8 billion.

Telmex is now a $17 billion enterprise, and Slim is looking further afield in more ways than one. His main strategic objective is to diversify the company away from ordinary telephone services and into data transmission, videoconferencing and the Internet. "Long-distance communications are old news," he told Time.

Slim's expansiveness inspires cynicism in his many Mexican critics. His Telmex purchase was condemned by many nationalists as evidence of his cronyism with then President Carlos Salinas de Gortari; one political party filed suit against Slim, saying he paid an artificially low price for his share, a charge he firmly denies.

The son of Lebanese emigrants, Slim first built a stake as a stockbroker in the 1960s before moving into insurance. His big opportunity came during Mexico's economic collapse of the early 1980s, when he snapped up cigarette manufacturer Cigatam, as well as Sanborns, the cafe and convenience-store chain, and Frisco, a mining company. Through Grupo Carso, Slim now controls 30 companies worth more than $7.2 billion. Critics aside, he is considered to be a passionate Mexican nationalist--and a fierce competitor. Yanquis, take note.

--By Daniel Dombey