Originally published 2007, part of a series I did for a biography website. Can’t even remember who now, but it’s long gone.
Lakshmi Mittal has been in the top ten world’s wealthiest persons, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion USD. Hailing from India, he is the most prominent example of the economic miracle that India has experienced in the late 20th and early 21st century.
Lakshmi Mittal was born June 15, 1950, in Sadulpur, Rajasthan, India. As a member of the Agrawal community, the family was of the Vaishya class and hence ranked as merchants, artisans, and cultivators in the Hindu varna system. Lakshmi grew up in a financially poor family home, with dirt floors and rope beds, in a house that was built by his grandfather. He was the grandson and son of industrial manufacturing workers. However, his father, Mohan Mittal, was more successful in business, founding a steel mill and eventually becoming a partner in the steel business. The family moved to Calcutta and prospered, becoming wealthy in the process. In 1969, Lakshmi Mittal graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Business and Accounting.
Having been given this moderate boost from the start, Lakshmi Mittal set to working in the family steel business in India. In 1976, just seven years after graduation, Mittal founded his own company, Mittal Steel. He immediately began making improvements to the steel manufacturing process, including the development of integrated mini-mills and the use of direct reduced iron as a scrap substitute for steel-making. As a result of these improvements, Mittal Steel became the biggest steel company in India.
Mittal is credited with the consolidation of the global steel industry. Throughout the years from the 1980s to the 2000s, he conducted a number of acquisitions of companies into Mittal Steel. Amongst these are Iron & Steel Company of Trinidad & Tobago, Hamburger Stahlwerke, Inland Steel Company, Unimétal, the International Steel Group, and Kryvorizhstal. The Kryvorizhstal deal alone cost $4.8 billion, and is considered the landmark acquisition that put Mittal Steel over the tipping point into a global heavyweight.
By the 2000s, Mittal Steel became the world’s second largest steel company, with over 300,000 employees in more than 60 countries.
Mittal moved on to an even bigger acquisition in 2006, bidding $23 billion for Arcelor, then the world’s largest steel producer. As can be expected in the case of the world’s first and second largest companies in an industry, there was much controversy over this move. However, Arcelor accepted an even larger bid offer in June of 2006 and a new company formed from the merging of the two, to be called Arcelor-Mittal.
Without question, Arcelor-Mittal is now the largest steel manufacturer in the world. The company leads the industry in the production of steel for every major global market, including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging. This means that Mittal’s product is most likely a part of every car sold and building constructed.
Historians and biographers cannot help but compare Lakshmi Mittal to Andrew Carnegie, and Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people goes into this comparison in their article on Lakshmi Mittal at considerable depth. Andrew Carnegie consolidated the United States’ steel market and Mittal consolidated the global steel market. The most striking difference, however, is that Carnegie was the first American company to achieve a $1 billion market capitalization, whereas Mittal broke that record by a magnitude of 100! Seeing as how 40% of the steel produced crosses an international border before it is used, steel is a heavily imported and exported commodity. So with a global market like this which shows no evidence of ever breaking – what could possibly replace steel? – Arcelor-Mittal looks to be in a position to rule the market for a very long time indeed.
Lakshmi Mittal’s story is practically the capitalist dream come true. A boy born in humble circumstances becomes the man who is a self-made billionaire. Lakshmi Mittal will have his place in the history books as the world’s steel tycoon, and is the poster child for aspiring tycoons of any industry.
