Diego Enrique Osorno is a Mexican investigative journalist known for his work on drug trafficking and power, and he approaches Carlos Slim from that tradition: he is not interested in investment method but in the political machinery that made it possible.
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Investigative journalist Osorno spent several years documenting Carlos Slim's trajectory using archives, more than a hundred interviews, and three face-to-face conversations with Slim himself totalling some seven hours of recordings. The book is less concerned with investment technique than with the political and regulatory machinery that made the Telmex privatisation — and the dominant position that followed — possible. An uncomfortable, well-sourced portrait of the relationship between economic and political power in Mexico.
Diego Enrique Osorno is a Mexican investigative journalist known for his work on drug trafficking and power, and he approaches Carlos Slim from that tradition: he is not interested in investment method but in the political machinery that made it possible. The book rests on several years of work, archives, more than a hundred interviews, and three direct conversations with Slim totalling some seven hours of recordings. Its central argument is that Slim's fortune cannot be explained without the 1990 privatisation of Telmex and the near-monopoly position that the terms of that deal allowed him to consolidate over two decades. Osorno documents the relationship between economic and political power in Mexico without lapsing into easy denunciation: he gives Slim space, records his version, and lets the contradictions stand on their own. The result is uncomfortable both for readers seeking a business success story and for those expecting a condemnation. It is a political biography, as the subtitle announces, and it should be read knowing that financial analysis of Slim's companies is deliberately out of scope.
For readers wanting to understand how a regulatory framework creates and protects dominant positions; less suited if you want analysis of Slim's portfolio or investment method.
FactPublished in 2015; Osorno spoke with Slim on three occasions, producing around seven hours of recordings, and drew on more than a hundred interviews.
