The Story behind Carlos Slim Helu, the Business Magnate

Carlos Slim Helu

Carlos slim Helu is a Mexican business magnate currently the second richest man in the world as ranked by Forbes(July 2015). On March 2010, Carlos overtook Gates and buffet and became the world’s number one richest man with a net worth of 53.5 billion. He later fell to the second position in May 2013 due to a massive fall in América Móvil’s stock. He currently has an estimated net worth of $77.1 billion with most of his worth in the telecommunication industry. He is currently the chief executive of the two giant telecommunication companies Telmex and América Móvil. Telmex is a Mexican telecommunication company that owns 90% of the telephone lines in Mexico City and 80% of the lines in Mexico. Slim currently owns 49.1% of telmex. Currently, Slim’s América Móvil controls 70% of the mobile phone market in Mexico, and 80% of landlines.

His father, Julián Slim Haddad (Lebanese), was a business tycoon who taught Carlos how to read financial sheets and keep accurate records. Carlos has practiced this throughout his entire life and he even currently prefers keeping his data in notebooks instead of computer. He doesn’t have a computer in his office.  Carlos started following his father’s investment footsteps at age 11. He made his first investment at age 11, in a government saving bond. At age 12 he purchased his first stock by purchasing shares in a Mexican bank.

Carlos is a graduate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, School of Engineering, where he studied Civil Engineering. “I am a man of numbers, from when I was very young, and that's why I selected engineering” Carlos disclosed this in an interview he had with academy of achievement. He believed his mathematical prowess gave him a key advantage in the business world.

He started his career as a stock trader in Mexico after graduating from college in 1961.  In 1965 his cash flow from investments reached $400,000 which helped him found the stock brokerage Inversora Bursátil. It also helped him lay the financial groundwork for Grupo Carso. According to an interview he had with academy of achievement he and his brother bought a bottling company of soft drinks in two states, Morenos and Guerrero in 1965. He also formed a construction company with a classmate in the same year.  At age 25, carlos built the foundations of Grupo Carso which was legally incorporated in January 1966. The name carso was coined from the first three letters of his name Carlos and the first two letters  Soumaya - his wife's name.

He is an intelligent businessman known for purchasing troubled assets at depressed prices and reselling them later at attractive prices. According to Slim He looks at the potential development of a company and buys it at low price and in bad condition. In 1982 the economic crises in Mexico made Carlos and his grupo Carso to take advantage of depressed companies by acquiring massive shares in different industries at depressed valuation. One of the investments that brought huge cash flow was the Cigatam. They used returns from this portfolio to invest in different opportunities. In 1996, he purchased a small stake in Prodigy when the company had fewer than 200,000 subscribers. In 1997, he made an outright purchase of Progidy for $100million in cash and in $150 million in debt consumption. Slim is using Pogidy as the official ISP of telmex in Mexico. 

He served as the first Chairman of the "Latin American Committee" of the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange. He was a member of the board of directors of Altria (previously Philip Morris Companies), Vice Chairman of the Mexican Stock Exchange, Chairman of the Mexican Association of Brokerage Firms, Board Member for SBC Communications, Inc.

Success Story of Oprah Gail Winfrey

Oprah Gail Winfrey is a magnate in the media industry and one of the 100 most influential women in the world (ranked by time magazine). Forbes has also ranked her as the first Black billionaire in world. Winfrey is currently the chairwoman and CEO of Harpo Production. She is popular for being an illustrious talk show host, producer, media proprietor, philanthropist and actress.  The media mogul has been ranked as the richest African-American of the 20^th century. In 2013, Oprah was awarded American’s highest civilian honor, Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Barack Obama. 

Winfrey was born on January 29, 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, USA. She was born to Vernon Winfrey, father, and Vernita Lee, mother, who were unmarried at her birth. The actual name on her birth certificate was Orpah, from the Bible, but her close relatives and friends mispronounced it as Oprah almost from birth so she also maintained it. Within the first year of her birth, her mother left for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to find job and left Winfrey in the care of her grandmother on a farm in Mississippi. Her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, taught young Oprah how to read at an early age. The grandmother was poor that she made dresses from potato sacks for Winfrey to wear. At age 3 Winfrey started reciting Bible verses and poems in churches. At age 5, she started kindergarten already knowing how to read and write.

At age six, Oprah was sent to her mother, who was a housemaid at Milwaukee. Her mother’s lack of attention made Winfrey’s life miserable. During the long day when her mother was absent, Winfrey was sexually assaulted by her cousin, uncle and a family friend (starting from age 9). She was taken for ice cream and told to keep the assaults a secret. She only disclosed it to family members at age 24.  She announced this publicly on a 1986 episode of her TV show when she was talking on sexual abuse. At age 14 Winfrey was out on her own and sexually promiscuous. She got pregnant at this stage but kept it a secret from her parents until the pregnancy was seven months. She gave birth, pre maturely, at the seventh month but the baby died at infancy.

After the death of the baby her mother sent her to Nashville, Tennessee to live with her father. Her life changed for good when she started living under the strict environment of her father. Her father ensured that she read a book every week and wrote a report on it. “As strict as he was, he had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best” Said Oprah.

At this time, Oprah concentrated on her education and public speaking. At East Nashville High School, Winfrey joined the speech team and won an oratory contest organised by Elks club which awarded her a full scholarship to study at Tennessee State University where she majored in Speech Communication and Performing Arts.  The following year she was invited to White House for a Youth Conference. At age 17, Winfrey was crowned Miss Black Tennessee, a beauty pageant contest. Her victory in the beauty pageant caught the attention of WVOL, a local black radio station. WVOL offered her on-air part time job. She worked there during her last year at high school and first two years at college. 

She completed college and was hired as a news anchor and a reporter at a local radio station, Nashville's WLAC-TV. Winfrey was the first black female news anchor and the youngest news anchor at the station. In 1976, she moved to WJZ-TV where she was a news co-anchor. She was also a co-host of WJZ’s talk show People are Talking, which she hosted with Richard Sher for eight years. In 1983, Winfrey was invited to host a show at Chicago TV station, WLS-TV. She was selected by the manager of WLS-TV in an audition tape sent to the station by Winfrey’s producer, Debra DiMaio. The show, AM Chicago, was just a half-hour talk show but Winfrey’s unique performance made the show very popular and it was later extended to an hour-show. In September, 1985 the show was renamed the Oprah Winfrey Show. Her fame upsurged when she played the role of “Sofia” in a movie directed by Steven Spielberg, titled The Color Purple which was based on Alice Walker’s novel. On September 8, 1986 the Opera Winfrey show was broadcast nationally which increased Oprah’s audience than her major show competitor, Phil Donahue.

In 1987, the show received three Daytime Emmy Awards and the following year Winfrey was also awarded the Broadcaster of the year by International Radio and Television Society.

In 1986, she formed her own Production company, Harpo Productions Inc. which acquired the ownership of the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988.

In 1993, she interviewed Michael Jackson, which became the most watched interview in America with an estimated audience of 36.5 million.

Winfrey currently has a great influence on the culture, lifestyle and health of most people in the world. Her influence on Americans was proofed in 2008 when she supported Barack Obama in his campaign. She publicly recommended Obama on her show which by estimate attracted over a million votes for Obama.

In 2013, she was awarded honorary doctorate degree from Harvard and Duke University.

THE SUCCESS STORY OF BILL GATES

William Henry Bill Gates III is a co-founder and technology advisor of Microsoft. He resigned as

Bill Gates 

the CEO in January 2000 and on February 2014 he also resigned as the chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft. Gates is currently the CEO of Cascade Investment LLC through which he owns stake in Corbis Corp and some Hotels and Resorts. He is one of the most successful and influential technology magnates in the world. Bill is currently the world’s richest man with an estimated wealth of $79 billion as at July 2015 (estimated by Forbes). He has been ranked the number one richest for 16 years out of the 21 years he has been on Forbes list of the world richest. Bill became the youngest billionaire in the world at age 31. At age 39 he became the world’s richest man.

Gates resigned from his position as the CEO of Microsoft and handed over to his Harvard roommate, Steve Ballmer. On 4^th February 2014, Satya Narayana Nadella also succeeded Ballmer as the CEO. Harvard awarded him honorary doctorate in 2007.

Early Years

Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, United States. His father, William H. Gates was a lawyer, and his mother, Mary Gates, a teacher. Young Gates was very curious, always with a question in mind. In 1967, as a difficult sixth grader, he asks his mother, "Have you ever tried thinking?"

When Bill was in middle School he started reading Magazines which developed his interest in starting a company. At age 13, he enrolled in a private preparatory school, Lakeside High School, where he first saw a computer. Bill was paying for his time to use this computer which belonged to Computer Center Corporation (CCC). Bill would always exploit bugs in the operating system of the computer in order to gain extra time when he runs out of money. Unfortunately, he was caught hacking the operating system to obtain free time and was banned from using the computer. After the ban, he was hired to find bugs in CCC’s software in exchange for computer time due to his exceptional skill. At this time Gates went to CCC’s office to learn source code for the programs that run on their system. Gates used this opportunity to write his first computer program which allowed users to play game against the computer. His arrangement with CCC to help find bugs continued until 1970, when the corporation was no more operating. Later on, Gates and other three friends were hired by Information Sciences, Inc. to write a payroll program in Cobol, in exchange for computer time and royalties. 

At lakeside high school, Bill was attracted to his senior, Paul Allen, because of their common interest in computer. When Bill was 17 he formed a venture with Paul and named it Traf-O-Data, to develop computer software that monitors traffic patterns. Because of Gates’ expertise he was hired to do a “computerized class schedule” for his high school and was also allowed to teach computer in some classes. Bill graduated from Lakeside in 1973 with a SAT score of 1590 out of 1600 which was a mark of excellence; this helped him enrolled at Harvard.

Birth of Microsoft

At Harvard, Gates started dropping some uninteresting classes to pursue his interest. Bill was once reading “Popular Electronics” magazine when he saw an ad about a new computer, MITS Altair 8800, based on the Intel 8080 CPU. He contacted the company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), claiming he had written a BASIC interpreter for their machine (though he hadn’t) and if they were interested in buying. When the company accepted to buy, Bill quickly contacted Paul Allen and they wrote a programming language called the BASIC for the company (a very demanding task for them). This earned them $3,000 and a copyright for the interpreter. Paul was hired into MITS in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bill then dropped-out of Harvard to work with Allen at MITS and they called their partnership Micro-Soft (in 1975). In 1976 they changed the name to Microsoft and registered it as a trade name.

First employees of Microsoft

On January 1, 1979 they moved Microsoft from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Washington.

In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft to write a BASIC interpreter for its new computer. Bill first referred them to Digital Research, developers of CP/M operating system, but Digital Research couldn’t proof their ability. Bill later bought an operating system, DOS, from a software developer (together with the copyright) in Seattle and sold it to IBM for $50,000. Bill was smart not to transfer the copyright of DOS to IBM. Microsoft started selling DOS as MS-DOS to some hardware producers. These sales promoted Microsoft in the industry. 

In 1981, Steve Jobs also approached Microsoft to develop a visual operating system (a system that uses mouse to drive a graphic interface and displays texts and images on the screen) for Macintosh Computers. The contract between the two wasn’t successful. Microsoft later launched WINDOWS which had a graphic interface. Steve Jobs claimed that Bill had stolen his idea but Bill refuted, claiming he had already seen the idea at Xerox.

In 1982, Paul Allen was diagnosed of Stage 1-A Hodgkin's lymphoma and could not take active part in Microsoft whiles on treatment. He fully left Microsoft in 1983 without selling his ownership in Microsoft. Microsoft released the first Windows, Windows 1.0, on 20 November, 1985 and floated their first shares in 1986. In 1987, Gates just 31 years became a billionaire. In 1995, Gates was ranked the richest man in the world with an estimated wealth of US$12.9 billion.

Personal Life

In 1992, Bill (32years) got married to Melinda French (28 years) who was a worker at Microsoft. They have three children; Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. Gates currently owns a 66,000 square-foot compound built into a hillside on the edge of lake Washington which he nicknamed Xanadu 2.0. He also owns a private jet. 

Philanthropic

In 1994, Gates and his wife created the William H. Gates Foundation which supported poor communities and promoted education and health. In 2000, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation was officially launched. Bill has been gradually selling his stake in Microsoft for the last 15 years mostly for this Foundation. Warren Buffet, second richest man, has also pledged to give out 99% of his wealth to charity mainly through this foundation. As at 2007, Gates has donated over $28 billion through this foundation (estimated by Forbes). He was ranked the second most generous in America in 2007.

 

THE SUCCESS STORY OF CRISTIANO RONALDO

Cristiano Ronaldo

Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro is a Portuguese footballer who currently plays for Real Madrid and the Portugal national team. He is one of the most successful footballers in the history of soccer, winning the FIFA Footballer of the year for three times. He is a forward and a left/right winger with 186cm in height.  His current wealth is estimated at US$79.5 million (Estimated by Forbes January, 2016). 

Around 10:20am the world heard the cry of a baby boy at the Cruz de Carvalho Hospital in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal on the 5^th of February 1985. This baby boy was just 52 centimetres and weighed almost nine pounds. That was the fourth born of Maria Dolores dos Santos Aveiro, a cooker, and José Dinis Aveiro, a Municipal gardener. This pregnancy came as a surprise to the family because they never planned to have a baby at that time, making Ronaldo just 18 months younger than his senior sister, Katia. The lower-middle-class family lived in a small flimsy building in a working class community. The baby-boy was named Ronaldo, after Ronald Reagan the US president at that time and the name Cristiano was also recommended by his mother‘s sister. 

 

Beginning of career

His father asked a friend, Fernao Barros Sousa, Captain of the Andorinha amateur football club to be the Godfather of his little boy. At age 8, Ronaldo started his career as an amateur footballer with Andorinha club. His unique talent showed up at that early age and was moved to another football club, C.D Nacional, just after two years of playing for the formal team. Whiles at Nacional he went for a three-day trial with Sporting Lispon, one of the biggest teams in Portugal and was signed up with the team. Within a

season at sporting, he played in 4teams: under 16, 17 and18 and the B team of the club due to his excellent performances.

RONALDO(right): Sporting CP

In a 2003 pre-season friendly match between sporting Lisbon and Manchester United the Manchester players were astonished by Cristiano’s performance and kept talking about it after the match. They urged their manager, Alex Ferguson to sign the young player to Manchester United. After some negotiations young Cristiano signed a contract with Manchester United at a transfer fee of £12.24million making him the first Portuguese to play for United.

At Manchester United

The 18-year-old player was given the number 7 jersey which was formerly worn by David Beckam. This jersey challenged Cristiano to put up his best performance due to the great players who have worn that shirt in the team. He scored his first goal for Manchester United with a curled free kick against Portsmouth in November 2003. On the 29^th of October2005 he scored Manchester’s 1000^th Premier league goal.

In August 2003, he made his debut in the senior team of Portugal and was made the captain of the team in July 2008. On 19 March 2008, he captained Manchester United for the first time. This was a match against Bolton and Ronaldo scored two goals, giving United a 2-0 victory. Conditions turned out to be unfavourable for the 21 year old player, when England supporters criticised him for influencing a referee in giving Wayne Rooney a red card in a match between Portugal and England in the 2006 world cup. Some fans reacted negatively to him when he played on some stadia in England. According to Ronaldo, he was expecting his coach and the chief executive of United to come out and defend him for that action but both were silent on the issue. As a result of this, he decided to play for Barcelona or Real Madrid in the following season but later confirmed his stay at United for another year. 

In the 2007-08 season he was awarded Europe’s top scorer, Golden Boot, with 31 League goals. His massive contribution in that season led to Manchester United’s victory in the 2008 champions League. He also won the FIFA world player of the year in that year, 2008. 

At Real Madrid

In July 2009, Ronaldo was sold to Real Madrid at a transfer fee of

£80million ($131 million) making him the most expensive player in the world. More than 80,000 fans welcomed Ronaldo in the Santiago Bernabéu stadium at his official presentation. Ronaldo kept on his outstanding performance in Real Madrid by scoring 33goals in his first season despite the months of injury break he had. 

In the 2011-12 season he scored 46 goals in La Liga which helped Madrid in winning the La Liga championship. In 2013, he won the FIFA Ballon d’Or for the second time and in 2014 for the third time. As the most key player in the Portugal team he couldn’t perform at his best in the 2014 world cup, due to a muscle injury on his left thigh, which affected the overall performance of Portugal. Ronaldo’s doctor, Jose Carlos Noronha, warned him not to continue playing in the world cup due to his injury. Regardless of the warnings he continued playing for Portugal in their matches. He was able to score his 50^th goal for Portugal in a match against Ghana at the group stage of that world cup.