Steely Resolve

A winning Essar Steel bid will mark Mittal’s homecoming

- Samar SrivaStava

Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, 68, rarely gives up without a good fight. He’s a veteran of many acquisition battles, most notably the six-month campaign he and son Aditya Mittal waged in the summer of 2006 to acquire Arcelor. The fight for Essar proved to be no different with three parties keeping their eye firmly on the prize over the past few months—Essar Steel’s 10 million tonne integrated steel plant in India, the world’s fastest growing steel market.

The last year saw several twists and turns as ArcelorMittal, NuMetal—a consortium headed by Russia’s VTB Bank—and mining magnate Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta traded punches, exchanged blows but each time been eager to get up and fight the next round. Mittal probably had an idea of how long drawn out the process would be when he told Forbes India in a recent email interview, “Certainly in the case of Essar there are unexpected twists and turns and there will be delays to the initial ambitious time frame that was laid out as part of the process.”