The Stel Salaried Pensioners Organization wishes to
thank The Hamilton Spectator for permission to post the following, published in
the January 28, 2006 edition
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jan 28, 2006)
A yoga-practising multibillionaire who lives in Britain's
most expensive house is the steel magnate behind a bold corporate takeover that
has ensnared Hamilton's Dofasco in a global drama.
Lakshmi Mittal, 55, is the chief executive and chairman of
Mittal Steel Co., which has made a hostile, $22.8-billion US bid for Arcelor
SA, the Luxembourg-based company that is in the final stages of buying Dofasco.
Arcelor's deal to take over Dofasco is still expected to go through, and then
Mittal -- Arcelor's new owner -- says it would resell Dofasco to ThyssenKrupp,
the Hamilton steelmaker's original "white knight" bidder.
But the story of Mittal himself may be as dramatic as the
steel world's current corporate moves.
Elusive, connected and not shy about spending his
considerable net personal worth, Mittal has built a career as one of the
world's most successful industrialists. He has been leading the recent
consolidation of the steel industry, trying at every opportunity to crush
Arcelor, his closest rival, with higher bids and faster moves.
Born in a village in India, he spun his beginnings at his
father's small steel mill in Calcutta into a global empire and has accumulated
an estimated $25 billion US in personal wealth -- making him the world's
third-richest man after Bill Gates ($46.5 billion) and Warren Buffett of
Berkshire Hathaway ($44 billion), according to Forbes magazine. It took him
until the last few years to consolidate his steel holdings across the world
into the publicly-traded Mittal Steel, strengthened now by his $4.5-billion
purchase of Ohio-based International Steel Group, and a string of other
audacious acquisitions.
He has been bested occasionally. Mittal Steel's joint bid
with an Indian oil company for PetroKazakhstan was foiled by China National
Petroleum Corp., and attempts to take over some of his most wanted properties
have been complicated by bidding wars with rivals such as Arcelor. Now, he has
made a move to eliminate the rival altogether.
"This is a big, bold move. It's bigger than anything
Lakshmi Mittal has ever done," says University of Toronto professor Joe
D'Cruz. "He has known the steel industry forever. His family has been in
steel for generations and it was the constant source of conversation around
their dinner table."
It was the powerful trend toward consolidation that set
Mittal and Arcelor up as rivals in the first place. The two have been leading
the charge to snap up smaller companies at a ferocious speed, all part of a
massive reconstruction that has seen hundreds of mergers as companies became
distressed or bankrupt due to modernization, pension or operating costs. In
2004 alone, there were 117 mergers worth $31.4 billion US.
Among them were Arcelor's purchase of a majority interest in
Brazilian steelmaker CST and Mittal's takeover of International Steel Group.
Mittal also bought three Stelco subsidiaries in late 2005 -- Stelfil and
Norambar of Quebec and Stelwire, which has operations in Burlington and
Hamilton. And at one time, a shareholder group had approached Mittal Steel
about a bid for Stelco.
Mittal has long preached the need for cost-cutting. His
family and personal interests are a different matter.
The wedding of his 23-year-old daughter in 2004 featured
singer Kylie Minogue to perform for 1,000 guests during a six-day bash in Paris.
The event cost a reported $60 million. In April 2004, he paid $125-million US
for a 12-bedroom London mansion. Last year, Mittal donated $3.6-million US to
Britain's Labour party, making him one of its biggest donors. The company is 88
per cent owned by the Mittal family.
The Hamilton Spectator and Spectator wire services