Mar 11 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Move over, Bill Gates, a replacement has moved into your position. That’s right, folks, Bill Gates is no longer the richest man in the world. His replacement? Carlos Slim Helu’ and he has quite an interesting story to tell.

Helu’ is the father of six kids, and a widower. His father, Julian Slim Haddad is a Lebanese Immigrant who moved to Mexico in 1902 at the age of fourteen. None years later, at the young age of twenty three, he started his own company, with his older brother. They put a little bit over two thousand dollars combined into their dry goods store, and within ten years, the worth of their merchandise was over one hundred thousand dollars. Don Julian’s net worth was reportedly over over a million pesos within 20 years of opening that dry good store, counting his investments in real estate, other businesses and stocks. Julian obviously taught his son a lot about investing and saving his money when he was still very young. Carlos Helu’ was buying shares of Banco Nacional de Mexico at the ripe old age of 12 years!

His fortune now comes from the fact that he controls 90% of Mexico’s telephone landlines. Although the recent economic crash has took an estimated 25 billion from the man’s fortune, he has still managed to maintain his wealth. He bought the fixed line operator Telefonos de Mexico (or Telmex) in 1990. The man would be a billionaire based on his dividends alone.