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$8 Billion: What This Week's Market Losses Cost The World's Richest Man

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim.
Yuri Cortez
/
AFP/Getty Images
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim.

Anyone who has a 401K knows that market fluctuations of the kind that have rattled world markets this past week show up significantly on quarterly statements.

Well, imagine what it does to the wealth of the wealthiest man in the world. According to analysis conducted by Bloomberg, Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom magnate, lost $8 billion in past four days. Bloomberg reports:

The Mexican billionaire's stock portfolio, measured in U.S. dollars, has dropped about 11 percent since July 29, before today, and is valued at about $63 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with a 7.1 percent slide in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Slim, 71, has taken a hit as Mexico's benchmark IPC index dropped 7.4 percent and the peso slid 2.5 percent against the dollar on concerns that the flagging U.S. economy will hurt demand for assets in its southern neighbor. The removal of three of Slim's companies from the IPC index has made matters worse for the billionaire.

"He's been particularly hurt by those companies leaving the IPC," said Leon Cabrera, a trader at Mexico City-based Vanguardia Casa de Bolsa. "It reflects the nervousness out there. It's part of being in the market."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.