Lakshmi Mittal, the steell man

Lakshmi Niwas Mittal (born June 15, 1950) is a London-based Indian billionaire industrialist, born in Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, India, and residing in Kensington, London. He was listed in the Forbes List of Billionaires (2006) as the 5th richest man and the richest Indian in the world with an estimated fortune of $27.7 billion and, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2006, is the richest in the UK, with a net worth of £14.8 billion.

He spent his first years in Sadulpur, living with his extended family on bare concrete floors and rope beds in a house built by his grandfather. His family, from the Marwari Agarwal caste, was from humble roots; his grandfather worked for the Tarachand Ghanshyam Das firm, one of the leading Marwari industrial firms of pre-independence India. They eventually moved to Kolkata where his father, Mohan, became a partner in a steel company and made a fortune. Lakshmi graduated from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta with a commerce degree in 1969. His classmates knew him as a sharp student who was good with numbers.

In 1994, due to differences with his father and brothers, he branched out on his own, taking over the international operations of the Mittal steel business, which was already owned by the family.
Mittal and Lula da Silva, August 2006. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
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Mittal and Lula da Silva, August 2006.
Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR

Today he is chairman and CEO of the Mittal Steel Company NV, which is the world's largest producer of steel, with steel assets in Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Poland, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the United States, Ukraine and other countries. He was the Fortune European Businessman of the Year for 2004.

In 2002 he was embroiled in a political scandal dubbed Mittalgate with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Many suspected that a donation by Mittal to the British Labour Party had led to Blair's intervention (a letter to the Romanian Prime Minister) in a business deal favouring Mittal. On July 13, 2005 it was announced that he had donated £2 million to the Labour Party.

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