Ricardo Benjamín Salinas Pliego was born on 19 October 1955 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Ricardo Salinas Pliego is a CPA graduate of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). After earning an MBA at Tulane University, he joined Elektra in 1981 as import manager. He learned the business moves when the company was in dire financial straits at the continuing devaluation of 80. Between 1981 and 1986, Salinas experimented with other businesses such as a restaurant in Monterrey, satellite dishes and the sale of systems multi communication.

In 1987 Ricardo succeeded his father Hugo Salinas Price as CEO of Grupo Elektra. The company began as a family-owned furniture manufacturing company called Salinas & Rocha founded in 1906 by Salinas’ great-grandfather, Benjamin Salinas. In 1950, Hugo Salinas Rocha created Grupo Elektra and when Ricardo Salinas became CEO of the company in 1987 he refocused Elektra on basic products: appliances, electronics, and furniture. Significantly, he developed at Elektra a vast new consumer market among Mexico’s lower middle income consumers by providing credit sales and diverse financial products and services.

Salinas formed the nonprofit Fundación Azteca in 1997 to address a broad range of social problems with ongoing campaigns in healthcare and nutrition, education, and the protection of the environment. It is a foundation that finances and supports other foundations. Fundación Azteca has raised millions of dollars, benefiting hundreds of thousands of lives. In 2005, Salinas launched Fundación Azteca America, which is committed to improving the well-being of the Hispanic community in the United States by functioning as a nationwide bridge between donors and Hispanic foundations.

Salinas also formed the nonprofit Fundación Azteca in 1997 to address a broad range of social problems with ongoing campaigns in healthcare and nutrition, education, and the protection of the environment. It is a foundation that finances and supports other foundations.

In 2001, Azteca launched Azteca America, a wholly owned Spanish-language broadcasting network aimed at the 50 million-strong Hispanic population of the United States. Azteca America has affiliates in 70 markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Houston, reaching 89 percent of the Hispanic population in the U.S.

In 2001, TV Azteca launched Azteca America, a wholly owned Spanish-language broadcasting network aimed at the 40 million-strong Hispanic population of the US. Azteca America has affiliates in 62 markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Houston, reaching 90 percent of the Hispanic population in the US.

Grupo Elektra 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 major Mexican businesses. Thus was born Banco Azteca, which currently has operations in Mexico, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Peru and El Salvador. Subsequently, Grupo Elektra obtained two financial licenses from the federal government to create Seguros Azteca and Afore Azteca.

In 2003, Salinas bought Iusacell (the first cell phone company in Mexico) and four years later, merged it with Unefon, another cell phone company, founded by him in 1999. However, in early 2015, Grupo Salinas announced the sale of Iusacell to AT&T Today, with Totalplay, offers the most innovative internet and television services and telephony via fiber optics to home. Also, Enlace provides internet access to institutions and companies with a higher speed at 10 Gbit/s, telephone and TV.

Salinas has been involved in a series of political and financial scandals (which include investigations by the American Securities and Exchange Commission and the Mexican Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores), and has been linked to ex-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Salinas was charged by the American Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2005 with being engaged in an elaborate scheme to conceal Salinas’s role in a series of transactions through which he personally profited by $109 million. The SEC complaint also alleged that Salinas and Padilla sold millions of dollars of TV Azteca stock while Salinas’s self-dealing remained undisclosed to the market place. This was settled in September 2006 with Salinas required to pay $7.5M while not admitting guilt. As part of the settlement, Salinas was forbidden for five years to serve as officer or director of any United States publicly listed company. Esteban Moctezuma (ex-Secretary of Interior of PRI President Ernesto Zedillo), was appointed as Chief Executive Officer of Fundación Azteca in 2002 by Salinas Pliego. His daughter, Ninfa, entered to the PVEM party (linked to the PRI party, some old but now of recent political endeavor) in 2009.

On November 18, 2008 it was announced that Salinas purchased 28 percent of the bankrupted American retailer Circuit City. Ultimately Salinas lost $41 million on his Circuit City stake after his attempts to restructure debt with store suppliers failed and he consequently abandoned plans to buy the company.

In 2012, Grupo Elektra acquired Advance America, a company short-term non- bank loans in the United States. Also put into operation Punto Casa de Bolsa. Group operates more than six thousand points of sale in Mexico, United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Panama, El Salvador and Brazil.

Following the decision of Salinas, the internet group Anonymous “attacked” the official website of Grupo Salinas on 1 May 2012, posting on Twitter that they wanted the presidential debate and not the football game. The official webpage—www.gruposalinas.com—was not available for some time.

On 3 May 2012, the IFE acknowledged that TV Azteca decided to air the presidential debate on XHTVM-TV, commonly referred to as Proyecto 40. On his defense, Salinas said on 4 May 2012 that the “majority of the population is not interested in the presidential debate.” He claimed that only 15% of the population is interested in the debate, while 54% of them claim they are not interested at all. If the statistics were different, he said, then he would have adjusted his strategy. Salinas then said that his business “understands well” the preferences of the population and takes decisions accordingly.