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The London-based
steel baron has had another great year. As the Forbes
puts it, "Mittal has been the biggest dollar gainer on
this year's listing of the world's billionaires, adding $18.8
billion to his net worth."
With a whopping worth of $25 billion, Mittal has been named
the third richest man on the planet, behind Microsoft's Bill
Gates and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffet.
Born in a steel-making family in India, Lakshmi Narayan Mittal
opened a state-of-the-art mill in Indonesia in 1976. His search
for non-scrap iron to feed the thriving plant took him to
Trinidad and Tobago, where he in 1989 took on Iscott, a government-founded
steel firm which was losing more than $100,000 a day.
Within a year, Iscott was making a profit. And the stage
was set for international expansion which saw Mittal's LNM,
buy plants in Mexico, Canada, Germany, Ireland and Kazakhstan.
After acquiring and rejuvenating plants in Romania and Algeria
in 2001, South Africa in 2002, Chzech Republic in 2003, he
reached Poland in 2004.
In June 2004, he spent Rs 200 crore on the wedding of his
daughter, Vanisha, at the Palace of Versailles. Before that,
he had also bought the Kensington Palace in London for 70
million pounds.
Mittal was awarded Fortune magazine's European Businessman
of the Year 2004.
Text: Sakshi Arora
Design: Rajesh Angra
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