'Times' Watch: What If Carlos Slim Is a White Hat?

You don't get to be the world's second richest man by making selfless investments. In fact, if you're Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim, you do it by exploiting cronies, smothering the competition and sticking it to consumers. In the absence of any evidence that The New York Times Co. is headed for a turnaround, then, most observers will assume that Slim expects to get more out of his $250 million loan than 14 percent interest (not that that's anything to sneeze at).

But what if he's not? Or, rather, what if what he's seeking isn't tangible but merely an escape from notoriety? Encouraged by his sources, Reuters' Robert MacMillan takes the optimistic view:

The 68-year-old Slim has been trying to remake his image in recent years from that of a robber baron who cornered the Mexican telecommunications market, shut out competition and got tacit (if not explicit) government support for it.

The world's second-richest man, Slim also has been donating millions to charity. Helping a liberal-voiced, family-run newspaper empire in distress -- one of the world's most famous, independent newspapers, we hasten to add -- without interfering in its strategic direction or editorial focus is a nice way to get people to respect you.

Whether that really does end up being good news for the Times remains to be seen; there's nothing quite so fickle as a billionaire who gets involved in something for non-financial reasons. On the other hand, being owned by a billionaire who thinks he can make a fast buck isn't always such a good thing, either.