Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, an Indian steel tycoon with headquarters in the UK, was born on June 15, 1950. He serves as both the executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the second-largest producer of steel in the world, and the chairman of Aperam, a producer of stainless steel. Mittal owns 38% of ArcelorMittal and 3% of Queens Park Rangers, an EFL Championship team. Mittal became the first Indian to be listed among the top ten on Forbes' annual list of the world's richest people in 2005, when he was rated as the third-richest person in the world. In 2011, Forbes classified him as the sixth-richest person in the world, but in March 2015, he plummeted to 82nd position. A total of 72 people were named in Forbes' 2015 "Most Powerful People" list, placing him as the "57th-most powerful person" among them. The wedding of his daughter Vanisha Mittal was the second-most costly in history.
Since 2008, Mittal has been on the Goldman Sachs board of directors. He serves on the World Steel Association's executive committee and belongs to the European Round Table of Industrialists, the Kazakhstan Foreign Investment Council, the Global CEO Council of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and the World Economic Forum's International Business Council. He serves on the Cleveland Clinic's board of trustees as well. He received several accolades in 2005, including "Business Person of 2006" from The Sunday Times, "Person of the Year" from The Financial Times, and "International Newsmaker of the Year 2006" from Time magazine. He was listed among the "Time 100" in 2007 by Time magazine.
Early Life Education & Career
Mittal was raised by Marwari Hindus. From 1957 to 1964, he attended Shri Daulatram Nopany Vidyalaya in Calcutta. He earned a B.Com degree in the top class from St. Xavier's College, which is connected to the University of Calcutta. Mohanlal Mittal, the father of Lakshmi, was the owner of Nippon Denro Ispat, a steel company. Due to the Indian government's restriction on steel production, Mittal, then 26 years old, established his first steel mill, PT Ispat Indo, in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, in 1976.
The state-owned steelworks of Trinidad and Tobago, which were making a huge loss, were bought by Mittal in 1989. In a year, he transformed them into successful businesses. The family's primary assets in India up to the 1990s were an alloy steels facility close to Pune and a cold-rolling mill for sheet steels in Nagpur. Lakshmi has no involvement in the family firm, which is currently operated by his younger brothers Pramod Mittal and Vinod Mittal and includes a sizable integrated steel factory close to Mumbai.
For a pittance of just one Irish pound, Mittal paid the government in 1995 to buy the Irish Steel facility in Cork, Ireland. In 2001, six years after it opened, it was shut down, making roughly 400 workers redundant. Environmental problems that have since occurred at the site have drawn criticism. The Irish government unsuccessfully sought a High Court ruling that Mittal's business should pay for the expense of cleaning up Cork Harbour. It was estimated that the cleanup would cost €70 million.
Prior to December 2001, Mittal bought assets and renamed them Ispat Mexicana and Ispat Karmet, his company in Kazakhstan. He changed the name of Sidex Galati, which he had bought in November 2001, to Ispat Sidex in that month. The day after acquiring the PHS Steel Group, which included Huta Sendzimira, Huta Katowice, Huta Florian, and Huta Cedler from the Polish government, the LNM Group was successful in completing the $155 million transaction to free the Romanian government from the control of the steel assets Siderurgica Hunedoara and Petrotub Roman.
In the follow-up, Ispat Tepro took the place of Petrotub Roman. Mittal was effective in influencing Polish politicians during the 2003 privatisation of PHS steel group, which at the time was Poland's largest steel producer, by using Marek Dochnal's consultancy. Dochnal was later detained for bribing Polish authorities in a different incident on behalf of Russian spies. The Polish government declared in March 2007 that it sought to renegotiate the 2004 sale to ArcelorMittal.
After many fatalities in his mines, Mittal's workers accused him of tolerating "slave labour" conditions. For instance, at his Kazakhstani mines during the month of December 2004, 23 workers perished in explosions brought on by malfunctioning gas detectors. Mittal was successful in his hostile takeover attempt of Arcelor in 2006–2007, and the company was renamed Arcelor Mittal. By doing this, he gained ownership of several steel companies, including Usinor of France, Arbed of Luxembourg, and Aceralia of Spain.
Personal life
In a Rajasthani Marwari household in Sadulpur, Rajasthan, Mittal was born on June 15, 1950. His wife Usha Dalmia is his spouse. Aditya Mittal, a boy, and Vanisha Mittal, a girl, are their children.
Lakshmi Mittal has two brothers, Pramod and Vinod Mittal, as well as a sister, Seema Lohia, who wed Sri Prakash Lohia, an Indonesian businessman. His home at 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens was the most expensive mansion in the world when he bought it from Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone in 2004 for £67 million (US$128 million). Marble used to embellish the home came from the same quarry that provided marble for the Taj Mahal. "Taj Mittal" is the name given to the ostentatious display of riches. It contains 20 car parking spaces, a 20-person Turkish bath, and 12 bedrooms. He eats dairy products only.
For £70 million, Mittal purchased No. 9A Palace Greens, Kensington Gardens, previously the Philippines Embassy, in 2008 for his daughter Vanisha Mittal, who is wed to businessman and philanthropist Amit Bhatia. In the French Palace of Versailles, Mittal hosted a spectacular "vegetarian reception" in honour of Vanisha. In addition, he spent $30 million in 2005 to purchase and renovate a colonial villa at No. 22 Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Road in New Delhi, one of India's most affluent avenues home to embassies and billionaires.
Individual Wealth
Mittal and his family's estimated personal net worth was $7.12 billion, down $2.08 billion from the prior year, according to the Sunday Times Rich List 2016. According to Forbes magazine's annual list of billionaires, Mittal was ranked as the 135th-wealthiest billionaire in 2016 with an estimated net worth of $8.4 billion. Mittal reached the height of his riches in 2008, when his net worth was estimated by The Sunday Times at £27.70 billion and by Forbes at US$45.0 billion, making him the fourth-wealthiest person in the world. He had a net worth of US$17.8 billion as of 2022, which placed him as the 15th richest man in India according to Forbes.