On top, the 'Carnegie from Calcutta' New Feature By Anand Giridharadas International Herald Tribune Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Steel tycoon is Asia's richest man, a magazine survey has found MUMBAI, India Lakshmi Mittal, the scion of a desert-dwelling Rajasthani merchant clan who bet his life on reviving the world's sick, forgotten, rust-coated steel plants, has become Asia's richest man, according to an annual magazine survey. . Mittal, 53, an Indian citizen who lives in London, leaped 59 berths on the Forbes registry of billionaires last year, adding $18.8 billion to his reservoir. Rising steel prices and mushrooming consumption, particularly by China, account for the growth of Mittal's fortunes by $36,000 a second last year. Mittal's $25 billion makes him the world's third-richest man, behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. . His company is on the verge of an even loftier distinction. Mittal Steel, an $18.5 billion behemoth with operations from Kazakhstan to Trinidad, will become the world's largest steelmaker, eclipsing Luxembourg's Arcelor, if its bid to buy U.S.-based International Steel Group succeeds. On Monday, both firms announced an April 12 meeting to seek shareholders' blessing for the $4.5 billion merger. . The rise of the "Carnegie from Calcutta," as Mittal is affectionately known in Mumbai, means different things to different people in India and overseas. . Some detect in it the leading edge of a new wave of Indian and Asian mega-entrepreneurs. Others point to proof of the power of global consolidation in the white-hot steel industry. Still others see the narrative of the Indian entrepreneur who fled a once-constrained economy, and whose relationship to his homeland has that curious exile's blend of triumphalism and nostalgia. . Mittal lives well. A �70 million, or $134 million, 12-bedroom mansion on Bishop's Avenue (popularly dubbed "Millionaire's Row," inappropriately for Mittal's much larger sums) in Hampstead, North London, has made him a neighbor to sheiks and entertainment stars. . He recently made waves as host of a �30 million, six-day Parisian wedding for his daughter, Vanisha, that included an engagement party at Versailles. . And there was a half-hour concert by Kylie Minogue, a sing-along at the Jardin de Tuileries; a dinner of vegetarian fare made by a chef flown in from Calcutta; and a skit by Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood's leading man. . Mittal is known as both a family man and a jet-setting workaholic. He has said that he clocks 563,000 kilometers, or 350,000 miles, on his private jet every year - the equivalent of perpetual motion at 64 kilometers an hour - managing what has become a huge global steel company. . Two pillars have brought Mittal his vast holdings: opportunism and alchemy. . His opportunism lay in an uncanny talent for spotting business opportunities where others saw bloated, rusty, remote steel plants, and in keeping his finger on the pulse of shifting regional dynamics that would relocate the center of gravity for steel. . He is perhaps the most celebrated champion of detecting potential in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe and Asia. . Mittal has now perfected a habit of buying ailing steel plants in remote locations that have vast but unseen turnaround potential and that are close to emerging consumption centers. . In 1995, for example, he bought a dilapidated steel plant in Kazakhstan that European firms had written off as being too cumbersome to transform. He is said to have seen enormous fat to cut through to leaner operations and an emerging opportunity to sell to China, at a time when the dragon's rise was still in infancy. . Today, in addition to operations in North America and Europe, Mittal Steel operates in a list of countries that reads more like a UN Development Program report than a corporate roster: Trinidad, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Romania and Indonesia. . Mittal's pouncing on such places has run him into the occasional reputational scuffle. A �125,000 check he wrote in support of Tony Blair's re-election campaign returned to haunt the British prime minister, after it was learned that Blair had subsequently written to the Romanian government to press Mittal's case to acquire Sidex, a local producer. . The second secret to Mittal's success is alchemy. After selecting strategically clever plants, the company has developed a rigorous process to drill the industry's best practices into far-flung operations, and to cross-pollinate ideas from new factories to the older ones. . Once a week, Mittal undertakes his best-known ritual. "Every Monday I talk to all the COOs in the group on a conference call that goes on for hours," he once told Fortune magazine, referring to chief operating officers. "The idea is for them to learn what is happening in the other companies." . In that ritual, executives are said to solve problems, down to an excruciating level of detail, for other plants, perhaps offering up a Mexican solution to an Algerian glitch. . In addition to tightening operations, the Mittal formula is said to include outsourcing social services like the schooling of workers' children, once common in state-run plants; cutting workforces; and climbing up the value chain to sell higher-end steel products. . In Mittal's alchemy lies a counterintuitive notion in the business climate of today: As multinational companies are told repeatedly to go "local," sensitizing their global offerings to the peculiarities of local markets, Mittal Steel is a success story of a company whose success rests in the inflexibility of its doctrines about how best to run a steel mill. . Mittal's story is the tale, not only of the steel tycoon, but also of the nomadic Indian tycoon. His life has followed the now-classic narrative of the local boy made good - but elsewhere. . Mittal was born into the Marwari merchant caste, in Safalpur, an electricity-free, desert village in Rajasthan state. . "Entrepreneurs come out of these conditions," he once told an interviewer. He worked early on in the family's steel business in Calcutta, before being shipped out in his 20s to Indonesia, where he set up a steel mill from scratch. . . For its part, India has received Mittal's achievements with the characteristic ambivalence that greets nonresident Indians, or NRI's: Happy for the local boy, but also wondering when India's economy will be attractive enough to have billionaires with local addresses. . "Laxmi," begged the headline in The Economic Times recently, "come home." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Help save the life of a child. Support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital's 'Thanks & Giving.' http://us.click.yahoo.com/mGEjbB/5WnJAA/E2hLAA/BRUplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> *************************************************************************** Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. www.ppi-india.uni.cc *************************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ Mohon Perhatian: 1. Harap tdk. memposting/reply yg menyinggung SARA (kecuali sbg otokritik) 2. Pesan yg akan direply harap dihapus, kecuali yg akan dikomentari. 3. Lihat arsip sebelumnya, www.ppi-india.da.ru; 4. Satu email perhari: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 5. No-email/web only: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6. kembali menerima email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ppiindia/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
