Mexico's Slim, No. 2 in Fat City

· Additionally, he owns a chain of stores in Mexico called Sanborns that sells everything from CDs to vitamins.

· He is only $3 billion in wealth behind Gates, or, as Forbes put it, "breathtakingly close" to the Microsoft founder. If Móvil's stock continues its meteoric rise, he could pass Gates any minute.

· In March, Slim pledged $450 million for health research but said rich people can do more good by creating jobs and building solid businesses, aiming a gentle jibe at the recent largess of Gates and Buffett: "Our concept is more to accomplish and solve things, rather than giving; that is, not going around like Santa Claus," he said at a news conference in Mexico City.

· "Slim" is not a nickname. In the custom of Spanish-speaking nations, Carlos Slim Helú's name puts his father's surname first, followed by his mother's surname, but he goes by Slim. Though he is not.

How did Slim get so rich? Well, he didn't start poor. As one of the more heavily covered figures in Latin America, Slim's rise and reach have been well chronicled.

Slim's father, Julián Slim Haddad Aglamaz, a Lebanese Christian, came to Mexico City in 1902, fleeing the Ottoman Turks, who controlled Lebanon. He opened a clothing store and built a nice business of it. Carlos Slim was one of six children (and has six children himself).

He gained an engineering degree and used his family's economic base to build his own wealth, through retail and real estate.

His big break came in 1990, when Mexico -- like many Latin American nations -- began privatizing state-owned businesses. But Mexico's privatization of its phone company, Telmex, did not involve breaking it up and allowing numerous investors access to the business.