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.
Mexico will be “the emerging market of 2011,” boosting
Slim’s holdings, said Walter Molano, head of research at BCP
Securities Inc. in Greenwich, Connecticut. Growth will come from
an economic expansion in the U.S., 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 percent in 2010 as the number of Latin
American mobile-phone owners neared 100 percent of the
population.
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 percent 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.
