The Global Man

One thing about success is, it’s not birth-discriminate. You can be born rich, you can be born poor, you can even born blind and still be successful. There is one person who has been very successful with his career as a businessman. Unlike those rags to riches stories he wasn’t exactly born poor.

Born on June 15, 1950, in India Lakshmi Mittal came from a family in the steel business.  He headed the international division of the business in 1976, when he had falling out with his family.

He then decided to go on his own. While family conflict is not something we hope for in this case it set the course for Lakshmi to set out his own destiny.  Steel had been viewed by many as a dying industry particularly in the U.S. There were many manufacturers of steel and countries like South Korea also could produce them at a lesser cost

Lakshmi bet his fortune on steel though.  Through stringent management, a good dose of financing and with enough size and scale he has been able to make his business profitable. When we talk of scale it has to be in terms of global scale, thus Lakshmi has a large global operation, with steel mills and mines located all over the world. His company ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steelmaker.

The size and money involved in the steel business sometimes include having to deal with governments and Lakshmi has had his share of bribery allegations but has managed to stay out of trouble. Lakshmi has actually received many awards and recognition for his accomplishment in the steel industry. Some of his awards are “Steelmaker of the Year” by New Steel in the U.S. in 1998; the Dwight D Eisenhower Global Leadership Award in 2007; and the “Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2008. He also sits in the boards of many prestigious institutions.

His net worth dropped by a staggering $6.9 billion dollars in 2011 due to a 40% fall in ArcelorMittal share prices. That amount would already make anyone one of the richest men in the world. Being the global man that he is, Lakshmi’s net worth was still $19.2 billion making him Forbes Magazine’s 6^th richest man in the world.