Lakshmi Mittal

Lakshmi Niwas Mittal (born 15 June 1950) is an Indian steel magnate, based in the United Kingdom.

He is the executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world's second largest steelmaking company, as well as chairman of stainless steel manufacturer Aperam.

Mittal owns 38% of ArcelorMittal and holds a 3% stake in EFL Championship side Queens Park Rangers.

He studied at Shri Daulatram Nopany Vidyalaya, Calcutta from 1957 to 1964.

He graduated from St. Xavier's College, affiliated to the University of Calcutta, with a B.Com degree in the first class.

Lakshmi's father, Mohanlal Mittal, ran a steel business, Nippon Denro Ispat.

In 1976, due to the curb of steel production by the Indian government, the 26-year-old Mittal opened his first steel factory PT Ispat Indo in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia.

In 1989 Mittal purchased the state-owned steel works in Trinidad and Tobago, which were operating at an enormous loss.

He turned them into profitable ventures in a year.

Until the 1990s, the family's main assets in India were a cold-rolling mill for sheet steels in Nagpur and an alloy steels plant near Pune.

Today, the family business, including a large integrated steel plant near Mumbai, is run by his younger brothers Pramod Mittal and Vinod Mittal, but Lakshmi has no connection with it.

In 1995 Mittal purchased the Irish Steel plant based in Cork, Ireland, from the government for a nominal fee of IR£1.

Only six years later in 2001 it was closed, leaving over 400 people redundant.

Subsequent environmental issues at the site have been a cause for criticism.

The Irish government sought a High Court judgement that Mittal's company should contribute to the cost of the clean-up of Cork Harbour, but failed.

The clean up was expected to cost €70 million.

Prior to December 2001, Mittal had acquired assets which he renamed Ispat Mexicana and his Kazakhstani operation Ispat Karmet.

That month he renamed Sidex Galati to Ispat Sidex, which he had acquired in November 2001.

In 2002, Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price obtained a letter written by Tony Blair to the Romanian Government in support of Mittal's LNM Group steel company, which was in the process of bidding to buy Romania's state-owned industry.

This revelation caused controversy, because Mittal had given £125,000 to the British Labour Party the previous year.

Although Blair defended his letter as simply "celebrating the success" of a British company, he was criticised because LNM was registered in the Dutch Antilles and employed less than 1% of its workforce in the UK.

In October 2003, the LNM Group succeeded in concluding the $155 million transaction to pry loose the Romanian government from the control of steel assets Siderurgica Hunedoara and Petrotub Roman, the day after it took over the PHS Steel Group which include Huta Sendzimira, Huta Katowice, Huta Florian and Huta Cedler from the Polish government.

Petrotub Roman was renamed Ispat Tepro in the sequel.

Mittal successfully employed Marek Dochnal's consultancy to influence Polish officials in the 2003 privatisation of PHS steel group, which was then Poland's largest.

Dochnal was later arrested for bribing Polish officials on behalf of Russian agents in a separate affair.

For example, during December 2004, 23 miners died in explosions in his mines in Kazakhstan caused by faulty gas detectors.

In 2005, Forbes ranked Mittal as the third-richest person in the world, making him the first Indian citizen to be ranked in the top ten in the publication's annual list of the world's richest people.

His daughter Vanisha Mittal's wedding (in 2005) was the second-most expensive in recorded history.

In 2005, The Sunday Times named him "Business Person of 2006", the Financial Times named him "Person of the Year", and Time magazine named him "International Newsmaker of the Year 2006".

In 2006–07, Mittal succeeded in a hostile takeover bid for Arcelor, which he renamed Arcelor Mittal.

In so doing he obtained control of amongst others the Usinor steel assets of France, the Arbed steel assets of Luxembourg, and the Aceralia steel assets of Spain.

In 2007, Time magazine included him in their "Time 100" list.

Mittal was born in a Marwari Hindu family.

In March 2007, the Polish government said it wanted to renegotiate the 2004 sale to ArcelorMittal.

Employees of Mittal have accused him of allowing "slave labour" conditions after multiple fatalities in his mines.

Mittal has been a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs since 2008.

He sits on the World Steel Association's executive committee, and is a member of the Global CEO Council of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, the Foreign Investment Council in Kazakhstan, the World Economic Forum's International Business Council, and the European Round Table of Industrialists.

He is also a member of the board of trustees of the Cleveland Clinic.

He was ranked the sixth-richest person in the world by Forbes in 2011, but dropped to 82nd place in March 2015.

He is also the "57th-most powerful person" of the 72 individuals named in Forbes' "Most Powerful People" list for 2015.