A Man Of Mettle

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Globalization, it turns out, means what the word implies. It is not just a ploy by domestic companies in the rich world to boost profits by outsourcing work to call centers and low-cost factories overseas. It involves a transformation of economic relations, not only because processes can be shifted from one nation to another, but because ownership and control of crucial economic assets is becoming ever more widely distributed. Though the Industrial Revolution's crucible 200 years ago was the Atlantic world, there has always been economic activity and wealth elsewhere. Now, investors and entrepreneurs from anywhere can hazard their skills and fortunes wheresoever they choose. Colette Neuville, a French shareholder activist, says of Mittal's bid: "It was a shock to discover that there are companies in places we used to refer to as the Third World that have become equal partners, or more than equal partners. Nobody had quite imagined that."

They won't make that mistake again. For delivering such a lesson, and for doing it with good humor in spite of sometimes odious personal attacks, Lakshmi Mittal is Time's International Newsmaker of the Year. "Whether I'm Indian or the citizen of another country is irrelevant in this global environment," he says.

In truth, Mittal is almost as European as he is Asian. He was born and grew up in a modest but well-connected family in Sadulpur, in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan, but his business empire has been constructed entirely outside India. Mittal began making his fortune a decade ago after breaking away from his father's Calcutta-based steel business and building his own firm, buying up steel plants in countries ranging from Algeria to Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the U.S. His timing was brilliant: worldwide demand for steel has been soaring because of massive demand from China and other fast-growing economies, and with it so has Mittal's net worth. By 2005, his personal fortune was estimated to be $25 billion — more than twice the size of Luxembourg's annual budget. Before the takeover, Mittal Steel was based in the Netherlands (as a result of the merger, the headquarters is moving to Luxembourg), and quoted on the London Stock Exchange. Mittal lives in London, in a 12-bedroom mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens for which he paid a cool $128 million, and in 2004 he threw a $50 million party for the wedding of his daughter Vanisha at the Versailles royal palace and another chateau.

Ask those who follow Indian business, and many will stress Mittal's global links. "Mittal is not really Indian. He's floating somewhere above India Inc.," says James Winterbotham, founder of London-based merger consultant India Advisory Partners. But in one sense, he is very Indian indeed, for a host of companies from the subcontinent are now getting into the global game. Even excluding the Mittal-Arcelor deal and the pending bid by Tata Group for Corus, data compiled by Winterbotham's firm shows that Indian companies spent about $6.5 billion on international acquisitions in 2006, almost triple the volume of the previous year. And this new prominence on the international stage is winning plaudits back home. "Lakshmi Mittal has done an extraordinarily good job for us," says Venugopal Dhoot, chairman of Videocon, whose businesses run from consumer electronics such as televisions to oil and gas production. "The world had questions about the ability of Indians running a global company. He's shown them."