Billionaire doesn't care if he's richest
Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim, who is estimated by some calculations to be wealthier than Microsoft founder Bill Gates, doesn't care if he's the world's richest person.
"It's water off a duck's back to me," the cigar-smoking Slim said on Thursday. "I don't know if I'm No 1, No 20, or No 2,000. It doesn't matter."
In July, a journalist who tracks the fortunes of wealthy Mexicans said Slim was worth an estimated $67.8 billion and had overtaken Gates as the world's richest person.
Slim hit the No 1 spot after a recent surge in the share price of his America Movil, Latin America's largest mobile phone company, according to Eduardo Garcia of the online financial publication Sentido Comun.
Garcia said that made him close to $8.6 billion wealthier than Gates, whose estimated worth was $59.2 billion.
Slim, 67, told journalists at a luncheon on Thursday that making sure his job was compatible with his family or personal life was more important than his wealth.
Slim, who is known for his Midas touch in turning struggling businesses into profit-making machines, has said he does not calculate his fortune on a regular basis.
In Mexico, a small elite holds most of the country's wealth and about half the population lives on less than $5 a day.
Aside from his business interests Slim also operates a series of charitable foundations which he said planned to invest $300 million in the next few years building 100 schools in the poorest regions of Mexico designed to focus on digital education.
He added that the plan would later be rolled out throughout Latin America.
Move over Scarlett, Gorbachev is new face of Vuitton
Move over Scarlett Johansson! Mikhail Gorbachev is the new face of Louis Vuitton.
The former Soviet leader is to appear in an ad campaign for the French luxury label, along with Steffi Graf and her husband, Andre Agassi, and Catherine Deneuve, said Vuitton, a division of the LVMH group, Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA.
Shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz, the ads focus on travel. Gorbachev is featured in a car, a Vuitton bag at his side and the Berlin Wall in the background. Graf and Agassi are shown snuggling in a hotel room bed. A vampy Deneuve sits perched on a Vuitton suitcase in a foggy train station - or is it a movie set?
The campaign will appear in magazines in September.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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