CORRECTED: Slim nears Gates on world-richest list

(Corrects spelling of Buffett in second paragraph)

By Chris Aspin

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim, a blunt-spoken bargain hunter of troubled companies, has become the world's second-richest man and is hot on the heels of Microsoft's Bill Gates.

Slim knocked billionaire investor Warren Buffett off the No. 2 spot on Wednesday in a list of wealthy people published by Forbes magazine, with $53 billion to his name,

Slim's fortune has shot up in recent months because of a rise in his companies' shares, mostly those of the America Movil cell phone firm.

Despite criticism of his wealth in a country with millions of poor, Slim has no plans to give large amounts of money away like Gates and Buffett, who are among the world's top philanthropists.

He says businessmen do more good by creating jobs and wealth through investment, "not by being Santa Claus."

"It is not a question of giving but doing," Slim, the son of a Lebanese immigrant shopkeeper, told Reuters last month.

Slim's companies have such an octopus-like reach in Mexico that it is difficult to spend a day in the country without putting more pesos in his pockets.

His empire also includes telephone giant Telmex, department stores, a banking group, restaurants and other firms that make cigarettes, kitchen and floor tiles.

He says he pays little attention to the Forbes list, which now shows him only $3 billion behind Gates, because it is based on share prices which can easily fall.

WORK ETHIC

"If the market goes down you have less, if it goes up you have more," Slim, 67, shrugged. "I don't do daily calculations," he said.

Famous for buying up struggling firms at cheap prices and making them profitable, Slim vowed to continue to work until he is "put in a coffin" or until "my body gives in".

That work ethic could soon knock Gates off the top spot that the U.S. businessman has held for 13 years.

Slim has handed over the day-to-day running of his businesses to his three sons and other relatives, rather than leave them money when he dies.

"When you leave them a company you leave them work, responsibility and commitments," he said, adding that running his flagship companies also stops them from "loafing about."

He learned business tricks from his father Julian Slim, who emigrated to Mexico at the start of the 1900s.

His father owned a Mexico City general store "Star of the Orient" and went into real estate when property was cheap during the 1910-1917 revolution.

"His story is that of a typical self-made man," biographer Jose Martinez wrote about Slim. "He lost his father when he had scarcely turned 13 but inherited from his father his enterprising spirit."

Not all Mexicans hail Slim as a business genius and say his wealth has more to do with political favors and privileges than business acumen.

"For me, it is a national embarrassment that there is one man so rich and so many so poor," said Guillermina Pena, 26, a hairdresser in Mexico City. "It does not fill me with pride."

About one-fifth of Mexico's 107 million people do not have enough income to meet their minimum nutritional needs.