No nationalization wave in Latin America: Slim

By Alistair Bell

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Venezuela's nationalization of telecommunications and energy companies will not be widely copied in the rest of Latin America because most governments need private investment, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim said on Thursday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently took over telecoms company CANTV and ordered foreign oil majors to give up ownership of crude oil operations in a drive that has upset financial markets and the United States.

Slim, the world's third-richest man and Latin America's most influential business leader, said he did not see many other countries following Chavez's lead.

"I don't think there's a tendency. It would be a step back," Slim said at the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit.

Unlike oil-rich Venezuela, many Latin American countries cannot afford to scare off private investors, said Slim, who has close contacts with many governments in the region.

"On the contrary, I think what they are looking for is a combination of private and public investment," said Slim, 67, whose business empire includes Latin America's biggest mobile phone company, a bank, retailers and infrastructure firms.

"Having telecommunications as a state monopoly is a backward step that would be rejected by everyone because it would also mean control of content and limiting freedom."

Chavez has declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela and is taking over parts of the economy which he says are strategic, such as oil projects and power utilities.

Venezuela will offer to buy out stock in CANTV TDVd.CR VNT.N next week, expecting to take a share of 60 to 70 percent in the country's biggest telephone company.

Slim, whose fortunes soared after he bought Mexican state-run phone company Telmex in 1990, praised Peruvian President Alan Garcia and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the kind of left-of-center leaders who had good relations with the markets.

The Mexican, who is worth $49 billion according to Forbes magazine, met Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega last month to discuss health, education and road-building projects.

"I found him open to private investment," Slim said.

Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, was a Cold War foe of the United States when he ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and aligned it with the Soviet Union.