Carlos Slim worth $70 bn, beats Gates, Buffett

Tuesday, 8 February 2011 00:18 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

MEXICO: Carlos Slim’s Mexican holdings from mining to communications helped him beat Bill Gates and Warren Buffett on the stock market for the second straight year, and gains in 2011 may widen his lead atop the global wealth list.

Slim’s publicly disclosed holdings surged about 37% to $70 billion in 2010, with wireless carrier America Movil SAB representing $48.9 billion of that wealth.

The 22% jump in Berkshire Hathaway shares wasn’t enough for Buffett to catch up, and Gates’s Microsoft fell, hurting his returns even as he spread his investments to other companies. Mexico will be “the emerging market of 2011,” boosting Slim’s holdings, said Walter Molano, head of research at BCP Securities in Greenwich, Connecticut. Growth will come from an economic expansion in the US, Mexico’s top trading partner, and from investors looking for growth opportunities outside of Brazil, Russia, India and China, he said. “Slim is in for a very good year,” Molano said in a phone interview. “With China overheating, and clearly Brazil looking like a very crowded trade, people are starting to look at Mexico as an alternative.”

Emerging markets in Latin America and Asia are in an “enviable” position for growth, with rising consumer demand and low interest rates, Slim, 71, said in November. America Movil shares rose 15% in 2010 as the number of Latin American mobile-phone owners neared 100 percent of the population. Slim’s best-performing asset last year was one of his oldest, holding company Grupo Carso SAB, which almost doubled as it prepared for this year’s spinoff of its mining operations amid soaring gold and silver prices. His biggest loss came from a stake in publisher New York Times, which fell 21%. Slim’s publicly disclosed shares in US markets represented less than $500 million of his total holdings, with the rest in Mexican companies. Investors in Latin America should focus on stocks that are exposed to Mexican domestic demand, which is increasing as local consumers have more money to spend after last year’s growth in manufacturing exports, Stephen Graham, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst in Sao Paulo, said in a research note this month. He is forecasting Mexico’s IPC index will gain 9% this year, about half the growth rate forecast for Brazil’s stock market index, after a 20% rally in 2010. Gates, the founder of the world’s biggest software maker, has boosted his exposure to emerging markets, with stakes in Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa SAB and beverage bottler Coca-Cola Femsa SAB. Even with that diversification, holdings publicly disclosed by Gates, 55, amounted to about $26 billion at the end of 2010, down more than 8% from 2009. Holdings in Microsoft represented $16.7 billion of the total, after Gates reduced his stake in the company by 80 million shares. Arturo Elias, a spokesman for Slim, said the Mexican billionaire’s comments in a news conference this week addressed his plans for the year.

Slim said he would spend $3.66 billion this year on Mexican telecommunications, mining and infrastructure projects. America Movil is spending $8 billion a year through 2014 to prepare for growth in the demand it anticipates for data services such as Internet access and video. (Bloomberg).