MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Latinamerica’s richest businessman digs for gold in Mexico

Carlos Slim, the man is worth at least 56 billion US dollars

Billionaire Carlos Slim, in the short list of world’s richest and number one in Latinamerica is digging for gold in Mexico, taking advantage of bullion prices that touched a record last month while awaiting a broader economic rebound.

Slim's mining outfit Grupo Frisco, a division of holding company Grupo Carso SAB, plans to open more mines this year and acquired one this month after ramping up gold production more than nine-fold in 2009. That increase helped boost Carso's profits as gold spot prices leaped 24% for the year.

Slim, who has been in the mining business for more than two decades, is leaning on commodities for growth as Carso's other units await improvements in Mexican construction and consumer spending.

The mining division's sales rose 58% last year to 351.8 million US dollars, a larger increase than the companywide gains at any of Slim's publicly traded holdings except the financial services business, Grupo Financiero Inbursa SAB. Mexico's economy shrank 6.5% in the same period.

Slim, 70, has been in mining for almost 24 years, since the December 1986 purchase of Frisco, according to his website. That was before his 1990 takeover of Telefonos de Mexico SAB in a government privatization sale and his move this year to the top of Forbes magazine's ranking of the world's wealthiest individuals.

Carso's larger divisions include a retail group, which operates the Sanborns department-store chain and Sears and Saks locations in Mexico, and units that make auto parts and cables for phone networks. Slim has a 79% stake in Carso, which makes up about 6.52 billion of his 56 billion US dollars in holdings of publicly traded companies, according to Bloomberg data.

Carso has climbed about 14% this year in Mexico City trading, making it the third-best performer of the six publicly traded Mexican companies that Slim controls.

Investing in commodities such as minerals and oil will yield growth because people in developing nations are gaining economic power and will be in a position to purchase more products made from those materials, Slim said at a summit of business leaders last month in New York.

“As hundreds of millions move from poverty, from auto- consumption, to the new society, they are demanding goods,” Slim said at the June 23 event. “Primary production is very important.”