World Oil
(Bloomberg) –Carlos Slim, Latin America’s richest person, took advantage of the equity-market selloff to boost his majority stakes in two U.S. energy companies.
Slim’s Control Empresarial de Capitales SA spent $24.2 million on the first two days of this month to snap up 923,000 shares of Talos Energy Inc. and 357,000 shares of PBF Energy Inc., according to regulatory filings. The Mexican billionaire’s stake in the firms rose to 21.3% and 15.5%, respectively.
The investments add to a buying spree this year for the Slim family, which continues to pour money into bets on oil exploration, production and refining both at home and across the Gulf of Mexico in the U.S.
In July, Slim’s Grupo Carso invested $1.2 billion to develop the Lakcuh deepwater field in the Gulf of Mexico that is expected to produce gas around 2026 and is located about 98 km (61 miles) southeast of the city of Veracruz.
Before the most recent purchases, his family holding company had already spent $500 million this year to amass shares in the U.S. energy producers. PBF is a New Jersey-based refiner while Talos, based in Houson, also partners with Slim in Mexico.
Slim, who was briefly the world’s richest man more than a decade ago, has seen his net worth shrink 19% year-to-date, in part driven by the slump in the Mexican peso. After surpassing $100 billion for the first time in December, his fortune now stands at $85.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
World Oil added context in paragraph 4.
