Ricardo Benjamin Salinas Pliego (b. in 1956) is a Mexican businessmen and one of Forbes World’s Richest People since 2000. He serves as President and CEO of Grupo Salinas and Grupo Elektra, two holdings with interests vested in telecommunications, media and retail stores, among those TV Azteca, Elektra, Iusacell, Unefon and Banco Azteca.
Salinas Pliego has a Masters in Business Administration from Tulane University (1979).
Mr. Salinas’ grandfather, Hugo Salinas Rocha, created Eletkra, 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 Group Elektra into Latin America’s largest specialty retailer.
Grupo Elextra 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 Mexican businesses. In 2003, Grupo Elektra was granted a license to operate a pension-management business braded as Afore Azteca 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, an insurance company designed to bring basic insurance products to the vastly underinsured mass market.
Mr. Salinas is also chairman of TV Azteca, the second largest producers of Spanish language television programming in the world. it is only of only two nationwide broadcasters in Mexico.
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. Thereafter, a duopoly has been established: TV Azteca and Televisa remain the only nationwide TV broadcasters in Mexico, a country of 107 million. Arguably, both firms have actively sought to keep off competitors by intimidating regulators and attacking individuals and firms who are interested in joining.
Most recently, Mr. Salinas created the Empresario Azteca program and its parallel Emprasario 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 Funacion Azteca in 1997 to address the broad range of social programs 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. Funacion Azteca has raised millions of dollars, benefiting hundred of thousands of lives. Today Fundacion Azteca is one of the highest- recognized non-profits in Latin America. In 2005, Mr. Salinas launched Fundacion Azteca America, which is committed to improving the well-being of the Hispanic communities in the United States by functioning as a nationwide bridge between donors and Hispanic foundations.
In 2001, TV Azteca launched Azteca America, a wholly owned Spanish-language broadcasting networked aimed and the 40 million-strong Hispanic population of the United States. Azteca America has affiliates in 28 markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Houston, reaching 77 percent of the Hispanic population in the U.S.
Mr. Salinas is a member of the International Organization of 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 America’s, and Harvard Business School.