Ricardo Salinas Pliego Biography
Ricardo Salinas Pliego is a Mexican businessman who founded and chairs Grupo Salinas, a conglomerate with holdings in telecommunications, media, financial services, and retail.
How old is Ricardo Salinas Pliego? -Age
He is 66 years old as of 19 October 2021. He was born in 1955 in Monterrey, Mexico. His real name is Ricardo Benjamín Salinas Pliego.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego Family – Education
He is the son of Esther Pliego de Salinas and Hugo Salinas Price, who is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He has four siblings; Esther Salinas Pliego, Guillermo Salinas Pliego, Rebeca Salinas Pliego and Norah Emilia Salinas Pliego. He is the grandchild of Hugo Salinas Rocha and Esther Pliego. Pliego is a CPA graduate of Monterrey’s Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores (ITESM). He joined Elektra in 1981 as an import manager after earning an MBA from Tulane University. When the company was in dire financial straits due to the continuing devaluation of the 1980s, he learned the business moves.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego Wife
He has been married twice. First to Ninfa Sada Garza and then María Laura Medina. He is a father of six, including Ninfa Salinas Sada, who is a Mexican politician.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego Yacht – House
Ricardo Salinas Pliego66, a Mexican businessman who is considered one of the wealthiest men in his country, owns, among other things, a luxurious ‘floating mansion’ worth $130,000,000 dollars. According to various media outlets, the owner of TV Azteca is also the owner of Lady Mora, one of the world’s top 15 most exclusive yachts. WLady Moura is one of the world’s largest superyachts, especially in terms of volume. However, its length of 105 meters places it among the largest yachts, according to the specialized yacht site Super Yacht Fan.
The yacht, which belonged to Saudi billionaire Nasser Al Rashid until last year and now sails under the Bahamas flag, has all the luxuries and comforts that we can imagine. Although it was built in 1990 by Blohm+Voxx in Hamburg, Germany, with the assistance of Italian designer Luigi Sturchio, the yacht appears to be in its prime because it was reconditioned in 2020.
According to the newspaper El Mundo, the floating house has four floors and can accommodate up to 27 guests in 13 cabins as well as 71 crew members in 36 other cabins. It has a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, the main room, a cinema room, a casino, a retractable roof swimming pool, a beauty salon, a party room, a bar, a gym, a medical office, and an elevator, among other rooms.
As if the interior luxuries weren’t enough, it also has a terrace, a spa, a beach club, and a heliport. This floating mansion draws attention not only for its rooms and amenities but also because its name and coat of arms are carved in 24-carat gold.
How did Ricardo Salinas make his money? – Career
Between 1981 and 1986, Salinas tried his hand at other businesses, including a restaurant in Monterrey, satellite dishes, and the sale of multi-communication systems.
Ricardo Price took over as CEO of Grupo Elektra in 1987, succeeding his father Hugo Salinas Price. Salinas & Rocha, a family-owned furniture manufacturing company, was founded in 1906 by Salinas’ great-grandfather, Benjamin Salinas. Hugo Salinas Rocha founded Grupo Elektra in 1950, and when Ricardo Salinas took over as CEO in 1987, he refocused Elektra on core products such as appliances, electronics, and furniture. Significantly, at Elektra, he created a massive new consumer market among Mexico’s lower middle-income consumers by selling credit and offering a wide range of financial products and services.
Grupo Elektra grew even more and became Mexico’s largest consumer finance company when it received the first banking license granted to any Mexican institution in nearly a decade in 2002. The strategy was to create new markets by increasing purchasing power among classes of people who were largely ignored by most other major Mexican corporations. Banco Azteca was born, and it now has operations in Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, and Honduras. Following that, Grupo Elektra obtained two federal government financial licenses to establish Seguros Azteca and Afore Azteca.
Salinas is also the chairman of TV Azteca, one of the world’s two largest Spanish-language television programming producers. Under his leadership, TV Azteca successfully privatized a government-provided media package, breaking Mexico’s long-standing television monopoly. In 2001, TV Azteca launched Azteca America, a wholly owned Spanish-language broadcasting network aimed at the United States’ 50 million Hispanic population. Azteca America had affiliates in 70 markets, including Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Miami, and Houston, reaching 89 percent of the United States’ Hispanic population. In 2017, Azteca America was sold to HC2 Holdings.
In 2003, Salinas purchased Iusacell (Mexico’s first cell phone company) and four years later merged it with Unefon, another cell phone company he founded in 1999. However, Grupo Salinas announced the sale of Iusacell to AT&T in early 2015. Today, Totalplay offers the most innovative internet, television, and telephony services via fiber optics to the home. Totalplay Empresarial also offers broadband internet access, video surveillance, broadband interfaces, and videoconferencing to institutions and businesses throughout Mexico.
Grupo Elektra purchased Advance America, now known as Purpose Financial, a company that provides short-term non-bank loans in the United States, in 2012. Punto Casa de Bolsa was also operational. The Group has over 6,000 points of contact in Mexico, the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, and Panama.
Salinas has spoken at the World Economic Forum, The Economist Roundtable on Mexico, the Young Presidents’ Organization, UCLA, the Institute of the Americas, Harvard Business School, and TED about globalization, education, entrepreneurship, freedom, and opportunity in the BOP.He also has a blog where he shares his thoughts on business, politics, economics, and culture. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Hill, Newsweek in Spanish, La Opinión, and he is a regular contributor to the Mexican press. Mr. Salinas was the first Mexican elected to the Aspen Institute’s Board of Trustees. Salinas announced in 2020 that 10% of his liquid portfolio was invested in Bitcoin.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego Net Worth
With an estimated net worth of US$13.6 billion in February 2021, he is the third richest person in Mexico and the 172nd richest person in the world.