Everything Warren Buffett: CNBC: Billionaire Carlos Slim Praises Warren Buffett As "Great Investor" and "Great Person"

Saturday, November 1, 2008

CNBC: Billionaire Carlos Slim Praises Warren Buffett As "Great Investor" and "Great Person"

Companies:General Electric | Goldman Sachs Group Inc | Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

There are only a handful of billionaires around the world who are playing in Warren Buffett's league. Mexico's Carlos Slim is one of them.

In the most recent Forbes ranking of global billionaires in March, Slim was number two with an estimated net worth of $60 billion, built largely on telecommunications. Buffett came in at number one with $62 billion.

Since then, the global financial crisis has erased some of those billions. In early October, Forbes put Buffett's fortune at $58 billion, but that was before Berkshire Hathaway's 18 percent stock slide this month.

Eduardo Garcia, a Mexican journalist who tracks Slim closely on his Sentido Común ("Common Sense") website, tells us he estimates Slim's fortune has fallen to $38 billion as of a week ago. That's down sharply from about $58 billion at the end of September.

Even so, Buffett and Slim remain two of the richest people on the planet.

While Buffett has made himself more available to the media in recent years, Slim continues to keep a very low profile. Interviews with him are extremely rare.

So it was quite a "get" when he agreed to speak with CNBC's Michelle Caruso-Cabrera earlier this week. (Carlos Slim Says: "I Don't Have Money, I Have A Company")

As they walked on a Manhattan street, Michelle asked Slim for his thoughts on Buffett and the investments he recently made in Goldman Sachs and General Electric. (General Electric is CNBC's corporate parent.)

Although Slim has only met Buffett twice over the years, the Mexican billionaire calls his Omaha counterpart "a great investor and a great person."

Current stock prices:

Berkshire Class A: [US;BRK.A 115490.0 3790.00 (+3.39%) ]