LAKSHMI MITTAL

THE MAN OF STEEL

” Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about”.

Today, while I was in my college, my professor gave me a nice thing to think about which was about getting a chance to write about someone special who was recently added to India’s 75th personality turning point in the new edition of Business Standard newspaper for the 75th Independence Day. I was very honored to write about this person because of two reasons that are he is not only making Indian proud in India but he is also making Indians proud in foreign as he currently lives there only and with all due respect, and the place where he leaves that country gave us more trouble in our past but he somehow challenged them through their eyes and now I would like to write his name whom I am writing this his name is “LAKSHMI MITTAL” as the world also known him as Man of steel as his entire business is based on steel and its production.

Lakshmi Mittal also known as the man of steel was on 15th June 1950 in Sadulpur, Rajasthan, India. He was in a Marwari family with two brothers and one sister. His parents run a steel business and from an early age he has a mentality of doing business as in Marwari it’s in their DNA business lies and if their father is in the steel line, he will be also doing business in steel only.

A lot of stories of his childhood are not known but some are there in public in his initial days he lives in India with his extended family in their grandfather’s house. After sometime when he started studying in Shri Daulat ram Nopany, Vidyalaya Calcutta from 1957 to 1964. Now, when due to some problems in India, the government started to curb steel so in 1976 Mittal at the age of 26 started his own company of steel PT Ispat Ind in Indonesia. His biggest success is that he started buying up lost making steel-owned mills and after some time through his work he turns that company into a profitable company. Through this process in 1989, he purchased an ailing plant which was revived.

Now, all was going great until in 1994, the group underwent partition and Lakshmi Mittal went abroad as all the foreign company was accumulated into a separate group that was run by LK Mittal known as ISPAT International, and its Indian operations were operated by his brothers.

Now comes the year 1995, when he along with his family settled in the UK, where he purchased Irish Steel Plant based in Cork Ireland for a nominal fee but only after six long years did he has to shut down his company because of some environmental issues at the site have been a cause for criticism and to clear the criticism the Irish government was asking 70 million to clear the wastage but he was not willing to pay the amount. But before 2001 he had purchased assets which he renamed Ispat Mexicana and his Kazakhstani operation Ispat Karmen.

His company mainly works in different sectors of operations like a wide range of steel for the mobility, construction, infrastructure, industrial, and energy sectors, and his company also established research centers stationed around the world, new steel products, processes, and solutions are envisioned, tested, improved, and deployed. His company is also intensifying its commitment to decarbonizing, recognizing that steel can make a significant contribution toward net-zero emissions.

In 2003, his company successfully held 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 and in this process he also succeeded in changing name of his company Petrotub Roman to Ispat Tepro and he was able to succeed in employing a famous consultancy to influence Polish officials in the 2003 privatization of PHS steel group, which was then Poland’s largest but after some time that consultancy which was named as Dochnal was later arrested for bribing Polish officials on behalf of Russian agents in a separate affair which was not having any issues with Mittal group.

In 2004, he takes a 2-billion-dollar cash dividend from LWN group to merge with Ispat and by this, he buys International Steel Group to create Mittal Steel.

In 1996, he was awarded Steelmaker of the Year by New Steel in the United States, and in 1998 the ‘Willy Korf Steel Vision Award’ by World Steel Dynamics for outstanding vision, entrepreneurship, leadership, and success in global steel development. And though he was awarded Fortune magazine’s ‘European Businessman of the Year in 2004 and ‘Businessperson of the Year by the Sunday Times, ‘International Newsmaker of the Year by Time Magazine, and ‘Person of the Year’ for his outstanding business achievements in 2006. He was awarded many other awards in January 2007, he was presented with a Fellowship from King’s College London, the college’s highest award and in 2007 he was awarded the Dwight D.

Eisenhower Global Leadership Award, the Grand Cross of Civil Merit from Spain, was named AST Steelmaker of the year. But from where he is from that is INDIA, he was awarded Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian honor, by the President of India in 2008. Due to his contribution in the field of the steel business, he was awarded World Steel Association’s medal in recognition of his services to the Association as its Chairman and also for his contribution to the sustainable development of the global steel industry in 2010.

In his whole life, he has had lots of controversies like the privatization of the firm and sale to Mittal might help smooth the way for Romania’s entry into the UN. It also had a passage, removed just before Blair signed it, describing Mittal as “a friend.

He is very passionate about sports so for the betterment of sports culture in India he decided to set up the Mittal Champions Trust with $9 million to support ten Indian athletes with world-beating potential. In 2008, Mittal awarded Abhinav Bindra with Rs. 1.5 Crore (Rs. 15 million), for getting India its first individual Olympic gold medal in shooting. His company also provided steel for the construction of the 2012 Summer Olympics. He has purchased stakes at QPR football club in EPL and sports car fields.

In 2009, he founded the Usha Lakshmi Mittal Institute of Management in New Delhi with the help of Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan.

His contribution in the field of medicine to help society is incredible as he has donated £15 million to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, the largest private contribution the hospital had ever received. This donation was further used to help fund their new facility, the Mittal Children’s Medical Centre in India.

In 2003. He was ranked 3rd in all-time leading rich man in the world and up to 2011 he was in the top 10 but right now he has around 9 billion dollars in wealth.

So, these are some of the facts and stories about Lakshmi Mittal and this is somewhat research I have done about him.

I am very glad that I have got this opportunity to write something about him……… THANKS