This image was lost some time after publication.

Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican telecom mogul, is worth about $60 billion, most of which he's built since 2003. That puts him right behind Warren Buffett and just ahead of Bill Gates. He's just acquired a 6.4 percent stake in the New York Times Co., whose stock has dropped 20 percent this year. Slim's initial fortune came from Mexico's privatization of national landline operator Teléfonos de México, or Telmex.Critics say that he milked Telmex's monopoly for cash instead of putting the billions into Mexico's telecom infrastructure. As an occasional New York Times contributor, I dread his arrival for the a much more petty reason: Every drunk entrepreneur whose world-changing wireless startup doesn't get blogged in Bits will blather to me that Slim had the story spiked. (Photo by AP/Miguel Tovar)