Lakshmi Mittal

Forbes Ranking 5

Billionaire: Lakshmi Mittal

Wealth: $28.7 billion

Citizenship: India

Residence: United Kingdom

Source of Wealth: Arcelor Mittal

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Lakshmi Mittal

Lakshmi Mittal came screaming into the world in 1950. Neither parent dreamed that their tiny infant son would create the biggest steel corporation on earth, and evolve into a billionaire, and the richest man in Great Britain. Today, the steel company, ArcelorMittal is worth over £100bn.

Lakshmi Mittal was born in Sadulpur, in Rajasthan, a small town in India. He was the first of five offspring, so his parents him after the Hindu goddess of wealth. When Lakshmi was six, the Mittal family relocated to Calcutta. Mr. Mittal was hired by a small steel corporation. This gave the family the ambition to establish a business of their own, which turned out to be a rather challenging proposition.
Mr. Mittal labored from dawn to dusk to get the family business going. Meanwhile, Lakshmi attended St Xavier’s, a Jesuit college, and graduated with superior grades in mathematics and accounting. As a teenager, Lakshmi Mittal had been bashful, and as a young adult, he was an introvert, but nevertheless, the young man astonished everyone when, instead seeking a career in accountancy, he joined the family company. It was a crossroads in what was to be an extraordinary life, and the making of a billionaire.

Lakshmi Mittal was awed by “the massive rollers driven by rubber belts and pulleys that flattened the red-hot steel into bars.” Later, he established his first steel mill, in Indonesia. It produced 26,000 tons of steel, and made him a billionaire.

Lakshmi Mittal amassed a fortune, became a billionaire, and gained world-wide recognition for leading the struggle to reorganize the steel industry to present an inclusive and universal model.
In addition to purchasing ArcelorMittal, and speeding up the tempo of steel industry mergers, Mittal supported the establishment of amalgamated mini-mills.

In 1996, New Steel presented the billionaire with their Steelmaker of the Year Award. He was also honored in 1998 with the Willy Korf Steel Vision Award, for “outstanding vision, entrepreneurship, leadership and success in global steel development.”
In 2004, after the merger of Ispat International and LNM Holdings, followed closely by his announcement of the purchase of the International Steel Group, Lakshmi Mittal was chosen Fortune’s European Businessman of the Year

Lakshmi Mittal made a surprise coupe in 2006, when he got a jump on the Europeans and acquired ArcelorMittal Steel, a company created by the merger of several international corporations.

Today, Lakshmi N. Mittal, 59, is not only a billionaire, he is also chairman and CEO of Mittal Steel Company NV, the world’s largest producer of steel, with assets all around the world. It is a powerful presence in every division of the steel market, the company manufactures a massive array of premium goods for the flat and long products markets. The company’s healthy client base, extends to over 150 countries.

Today, Lakshmi Mittal, London’s most famous billionaire oversees ArcelorMittal, the largest steel-making plant on the globe.

Besides being a billionaire, Lakshmi Mittal is an avid philanthropist and serves on several boards, including the boards of directors of Goldman Sachs, and the Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management in the United States

ArcelorMittal, the company that made Lakshmi Mittal a billionaire, is the biggest steel company in the world, with steel-making facilities in 16 countries, reaching across four continents.

The famous billionaire, with a net worth of £14.8 billion, is the wealthiest man in Great Britain. He resides at Kensington Palace Gardens, London, UK.

The self-made man is “one who is born into unpromising circumstances, rather than wealth and privilege, and yet by his own efforts manages to become a great success in life.” As a “self-made man,” Lakshmi Mittal became a billionaire by hard work and unrelenting effort.