Industrialist: Lakshmi Mittal

This is the shopping that one my favorite industrialist did in the last six months:

The World's Largest steel company is now called Arcelor-Mittal, Lakshmi Mittal the Fifth richest man according to Forbes 2006 rating is now the non-executive president of the company. The conglomerate came at the cost of 25.6 Billion Euro($32.3 billion dollars) for Mittal to control 10% of the worlds steel production with more than 100 tones in production each year. The company's annual turnover is expected to be around 55 billion Euro. The company now produces 3 times more steel than the worlds second largest producer(its closest rival) Nippon Steel, Japan.

What's the big deal?
Lakshmi Mittal was an Indian born billionaire. He was born in Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, India. He was born in a very ordinary family in India and became a partner in a steel company. He started buying steel companies from Russia that were about to be shut down during war for cheap prices. He brought the production up in those companies by cutting costs and increasing output in his own way. The way he did it and he still does is to bring his own set of top level management(all Indian masterminds) put them in the company and completely redesign the infrastructure from bottom up.

His family now holds 43.4% of the shares in the new steel giant. It took him almost 6 months from his first bid on Arcelor SA of Luxembourg to finalize the deal which ended on June 25th 2006. His target company Arcelor dodged his hostile takeover bid once by stating that he is an Indian born with manangement policies that do not go well with European standards and again by trying to sell itself to a White Knight Severstal Steel, Russia.

Mittal pursued his merger deal with so much zeal that sets him apart as one of best Industrialist of this era. He revised his price for Arcelor three times from the initial bid. The Indian government supported his merger by writing recommendation letters to the countries in Europe where Arcelor is placed.

Mittal now lives in Britain in a palace that he bought for $128 Million. He spent about $65 Million on his daughter Vanishas wedding which still holds the title of being the most expensive wedding in the world history. His son Aditya who graduated from Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Economics, is the Chief Financial Officer of the company .