ERALDO PERES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARLOS SLIM HELÚ


By MARC LACEY


MEXICO CITY - Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico’s richest man, has a complex relationship with the news media. He invests money in an array of television and newspaper companies and says he sees a bright future for those media companies that adapt.

But when the news media focus their spotlight on him, he sometimes gives the impression that he wants to be left alone to make more money in peace.

An avid newspaper reader, Mr.Slim says he sees the shift to digital news, which has left newspaper companies struggling, as not necessarily being their death knell. With telecommunications, retailing and construction companies under his command, Mr.Slim looms large over the media landscape in his country.

Raymundo Riva Palacio, a veteran journalist in Mexico City, said that after he wrote a column in El Universal newspaper in 2006 condemning Mr.Slim as a monopolist, a Slim adviser threatened to remove ads from his companies.

That was no small threat. Mr.Slim’s holdings are so vast that he controls a large chunk of all advertising countrywide. Eduardo Garcia, a Mexican journalist who runs a Spanish-language financial news Web site and follows Mr.Slim, estimated his wealth at almost $44 billion as of the end of 2008.

“I took it as part of the natural dynamic between the media and the powers that be in Mexico,”Mr.Riva Palacio said, adding that the incident was quietly resolved.“That’s how things work here.”

Mr.Slim declined through his spokesman and son-in-law, Arturo Elias, to be interviewed for this article. But Mr.Elias said that no ads were removed and that Mr.Slim does not use his economic might that way.“We are an important advertiser, yes, but that doesn’t give us a right to meddle in the editorial side,”Mr.Elias said.

Mr.Slim joined the top ranks of the world’s billionaires when he bought the Mexican telephone monopoly, Telefonos de Mexico, known as Telmex, from the government in 1990.

Today, even though Mexico’s telephone market is ostensibly open to competition, its rates are among the highest in the world. Competitors say the company throws up repeated obstacles and regulators are reluctant to act.

Mr.Slim bristles at suggestions that he is a monopolist not doing his part for Mexico.“I think it’s perverse to believe that there shouldn’t be strong companies in poor countries,’’he told journalists last fall.

When it comes to the media, Mr.Slim’s family businesses have invested in a variety of television networks and bought a 1 percent stake in The Independent newspaper in Britain last year.

“His leverage is tremendous,”said Mr.Garcia, who publishes a financial news Web site in Mexico City, (sentidocomun.com.mx), that tracks Mr.Slim’s holdings.“That’s how he muffles all the criticisms that might come his way.”

Behind the scenes, he deploys lawyers to fight efforts by the government to enforce antitrust laws against him.

The country’s Federal Competition Commission is looking into Mr.Slim’s companies. But the agency is outspent and outmanned by Mr.Slim. His companies“spend more on a single case than our entire annual budget,”said an official at the commission.

Even though Mr.Slim sees moneymaking opportunities in the media, Raul Trejo, a journalism professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said Mr.Slim is not an aspiring media tycoon who dictates news coverage.

Mr.Elias said recently that Mr.Slim considered his latest investment in The New York Times - $250 million, for which he will receive a 14 percent interest rate and warrants that are convertible into Times Company shares - as a business deal.

Besides the financial benefits, those who know Mr.Slim also see in the deal an effort to bolster his reputation by linking himself with a well-known brand.

“We journalists cover so many bad guys here in Mexico, so many big egos, that Slim, despite all his faults, doesn’t appear all that bad,”said Mr.Riva Palacio, the Mexico City journalist.