Salinas is chairman of Grupo Elektra, a conglomerate with revenue of 119 billion Mexican pesos ($6.1 billion) in 2019. The Mexico City-based lending and retail group owns Banco Azteca. The billionaire also owns shares in broadcaster TV Azteca and sold half of mobile phone operator Iusacell for $1.7 billion in 2015.
Ricardo Salinas's net worth of $11.7B can buy ...
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The majority of Salinas's fortune is derived from his stakes in two publicly traded companies: Grupo Elektra, a retail and banking conglomerate, and TV Azteca, a Spanish-language broadcaster.
Salinas and his family own 74% of Grupo Elektra and 66% of TV Azteca, according to the companies' 2019 annual reports. He sold his half of closely held Iusacell, Mexico's third-largest mobile phone carrier, to AT&T for $1.7 billion in January 2015.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Daniel McCosh, a spokesman for Grupo Salinas, declined to comment on the billionaire's net worth.
Great-grandfather Benjamin Salinas Westrup began selling beds with brother-in-law Joel Rocha Barocio in 1906, eventually turning the business into furniture retailer Salinas & Rocha. Grandfather Hugo Salinas Rocha co-founded a radio factory that would later become Grupo Elektra. Father Hugo Salinas Price joined the business in 1950, rising to CEO in 1952.
Young Ricardo sold honey door to door with his brothers and sisters at the age of 10. After graduating from the Monterrey Technological Institute in 1977, he briefly ran a restaurant before turning to business. Among his first endeavors: installing satellite dishes made out of metal and chicken wire.
He succeeded his father as CEO of Grupo Elektra in 1987, and expanded the company into banking. Today, Grupo Elektra operates more than 6,000 outlets in the U.S. and seven countries in Latin America. He founded TV Azteca in 1993, effectively breaking Mexico's television monopoly. Ten years later, he led a group of investors in buying Iusacell, Mexico's third-biggest mobile phone operator, and sold a 50 percent stake in the business to AT&T for $1.7 billion in January 2015.
Through his two foundations, Salinas's charitable giving focuses on improving health and education in Mexico, and in Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S.