Ricardo Salinas Pliego

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Ricardo B. Salinas is one of Latin America’s leading corporate figures and entrepreneurs. In his nonpareil career, he has fought an Old Guard of oligarchs and monopolists, and he has thrived. He has profoundly abetted Mexico’s progress toward modernization by creating new markets among Mexico’s working classes.

And, as chairman and founder of Grupo Salinas ^[1], which includes several of the largest companies in Mexico, Mr. Salinas has spearheaded the promotion of free trade, government deregulation, and foreign investment. His work is at the heart of the Mexican modernization as the innovations he first introduced continue to decisively affect management, marketing, and information technology throughout Mexico.

The origins of Grupo Salinas are set in 1906, when Mr. Salinas’ great grandfather, Benjamín Salinas, created Salinas & Rocha, a modest family-owned furniture manufacturing company. In 1950, Mr. Salinas’ grandfather, Hugo Salinas Rocha, created Elektra ^[2], and when Ricardo Salinas became CEO of the company in 1987, Elektra had fewer than 60 stores and averted financial distress following the devaluation of the peso. Mr. Salinas refocused Elektra on basic products: appliances, electronics, and furniture. Significantly, he developed a vast new consumer market among Mexico’s lower-middle income consumers by providing credit sales (guided by careful risk-management practices) and diverse financial products and services, including money transfers via an alliance with Western Union. In just a few years, through organic expansion and acquisitions, Mr. Salinas built Grupo Elektra ^[3]into Latin America’s largest specialty retailer.

Grupo Elektra expanded further and became Mexico’s biggest consumer-finance company when, in 2002, it won the first banking license granted to any Mexican institution in nearly a decade. The strategy was to build new markets by creating new buying power among classes of people largely ignored by most other major Mexican businesses. In 2003, Grupo Elektra was granted a license to operate a pension-management business branded as Afore Azteca ^[4] which started an industry-wide revolution by setting new low commission standards, and increasing the range of services for clients overlooked by financial services firms in Mexico. Similarly, Grupo Elektra launched Seguros Azteca ^[5], an insurance company designed to bring basic insurance products to the vastly underinsured mass market.

Mr. Salinas is also chairman of TV Azteca ^[6], one of the two largest producers of Spanish language television programming in the world. It is one of only two nationwide broadcasters in Mexico, and is now the most profitable integrated broadcaster in the world.

TV Azteca was founded in 1993 when an investor group led by Mr. Salinas bought from the Mexican government two national television licenses coupled with television studios full of decrepit broadcasting equipment. Under his leadership, TV Azteca has broken Mexico’s long-standing television monopoly through the successful privatization of the Azteca 13 and Azteca 7 networks.

Most recently, Mr. Salinas created the Empresario Azteca ^[7] program and its parallel, Empresario Azteca Association (ASMAZ), as a broad program to support small businesses the core of Mexico’s economy. This initiative applies the breadth and depth of Grupo Salinas’ management expertise, financing capabilities, market strength, purchasing power, and its extensive distribution network to provide training, consulting, financing, equipment procurement, and other resources to small businesses throughout the country.

Mr. Salinas also formed the nonprofit Fundación Azteca in 1997 to address a broad range of social problems with ongoing campaigns in healthcare and nutrition, education, and the protection of the environment. It is a foundation that finances and supports other foundations, thus leveraging its impact exponentially. Fundación Azteca has raised millions of dollars, benefiting hundreds of thousands of lives. Today Fundación Azteca ^[8] is one of the highest-recognized non-profits in Latin America. In 2005, Mr. Salinas launched Fundación Azteca America ^[9], which is committed to improving the well-being of the Hispanic community in the United States by functioning as a nationwide bridge between donors and Hispanic foundations.

In 2001, TV Azteca launched Azteca America ^[10], a wholly owned Spanish-language broadcasting network aimed at the 40 million-strong Hispanic population of the United States. Azteca America has affiliates in 38 markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Houston, reaching 77 percent of the Hispanic population in the U.S.

Unefon Holdings, a Grupo Salinas company has a 46.5% stake in Unefon ^[11]and Telecosmo. Telecosmo is the first wireless broadband Internet service provider in Mexico; and Unefon is a wireless telecommunications company that built its client base to 1.4 million subscribers and generated EBITDA of more than US$110 million after just three years in operation.

Unefon covers 19 cities with its own network and reaches an additional 23,000 urban areas through a capacity exchange and roaming agreement with Grupo Iusacell ^[12]. In July 2003, Movil@ccess, also a Grupo Salinas telecommunications operator, completed a successful tender offer to purchase 75% of Grupo Iusacell, which was facing bankruptcy. Since then, Iusacell’s financial performance, quality of service, and technology platforms have improved noticeably.

Mr. Salinas has been recognized by many of the world’s leading business organizations as a true business visionary. He is a member of the International Organization for Migration’s Business Advisory Board. He has addressed the World Economic Forum, The Young Presidents’ Organization, The Economist Roundtable on Mexico, and he has spoken at The Institute of the Americas, and Harvard Business School.

The Grupo Salinas is all about value – value derived from high-growth industries, from new growth markets, from high-speed national modernization, and from high-commitment programs that benefit the entire community. As a family man, a patron of the arts, and a citizen of both Mexico and the world, Mr. Salinas’ success continues to be driven by an abiding faith in free markets as the one irresistible agent of democratic change everywhere.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] See also

• List of Mexican billionaires

Grupo Salinas

Corporate Directors: Joaquín Arrangoiz | Francisco Borrego | Tristán Canales | Luis J. Echarte | Diego Foyo | Gustavo Guzmán | Alfredo Honsberg | Gustavo Lacroix | Martín Luna | Armando Melgar | Jorge Mendoza | Esteban Moctezuma | Ernesto Nava | Luis Niño de Rivera | Pedro Padilla | Tim Parsa | Ricardo Salinas Pliego | Carlos Septién | Mario San Román | Javier Sarro | Adrian Steckel | José Ignacio Suárez | Gustavo Vega

Assets: Afore Azteca | Azteca América | Banco Azteca | Grupo Elektra | Iusacell | Movil@ccess | Seguros Azteca | todito.com | Telecosmo | TV Azteca | Unefon

Annual Revenue: 3.7 billion USD FY 2005) | Employees: 34,000 | Website: www.gruposalinas.com

[edit] External links

• Ricardo Salinas Pliego on Revista Poder (Spanish).
• El nuevo imperio Azteca (Spanish) on Etcétera.