Lakshmi Mittal

• 1. The Taj Mittal

  ›

  Lakshmi Mittal paid £67 million in 2004 for a London mansion at 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens, which made it the world's most expensive house at the time. In dollars, the price came to about US$128 million. The marble inside came from the same quarry that supplied the Taj Mahal, and the show of wealth earned the property the nickname "Taj Mittal". The house has 12 bedrooms, an indoor pool, Turkish baths and parking for 20 cars. Its seller was Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One boss. Its buyer was an Indian steel magnate who is now the executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world's second largest steelmaking company. How does anyone assemble that kind of fortune from steel plants that governments were willing to sell? Who paid the price for the deals along the way? And what becomes of a fortune that once ranked among the top few on Earth, when the rankings begin to slide?

  4850512310

• 2. Building the Empire

  ›

  Sadulpur, in Rajasthan, is where Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born on the 15th of June 1950, into a Marwari family. His father, Mohanlal Mittal, ran a steel business called Nippon Denro Ispat. From 1957 to 1964 the boy studied at Shri Daulatram Nopany Vidyalaya in Calcutta, the school later known as Nopany High. He went on to St. Xavier's College, which is affiliated with the University of Calcutta, and earned a B.Com degree in the first class.

  In 1976 the Indian government curbed steel production, and the 26-year-old Mittal looked abroad. His first steel factory, PT Ispat Indo, opened in Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia.

  In 1989 he bought the state-owned steel works in Trinidad and Tobago, which were running at an enormous loss. Within a year he had made them profitable. In 1995 he bought the Irish Steel plant in Cork, Ireland, from the government for a nominal fee of IR£1. The plant closed in 2001, and over 400 people lost their jobs. Environmental problems at the site have drawn criticism ever since. The Irish government asked the High Court to order Mittal's company to share the cost of cleaning up Cork Harbour, and the attempt failed. That clean-up was expected to cost €70 million.

  Before December 2001, Mittal had acquired assets that he renamed Ispat Mexicana, along with a Kazakhstani operation called Ispat Karmet. In November 2001 he acquired Sidex Galati, and the following month he renamed it Ispat Sidex. In October 2003 his LNM Group closed a $155 million deal that pried Siderurgica Hunedoara and Petrotub Roman out of Romanian government control. The day before, it had taken over the PHS Steel Group from the Polish government. That group included Huta Sendzimira, Huta Katowice, Huta Florian and Huta Cedler. Petrotub Roman was later renamed Ispat Tepro.

  Back in India, the family's main assets until the 1990s were a cold-rolling mill for sheet steel in Nagpur and an alloy steel plant near Pune. Today his younger brothers Pramod and Vinod run the family business, including a large integrated plant near Mumbai. Lakshmi has no connection with it.

  1918212425

• 3. Takeover and Titles

  ›

  In 2006-07 Mittal won a hostile takeover bid for Arcelor and renamed the company ArcelorMittal. Control of Arcelor brought him the Usinor steel assets of France, the Arbed assets of Luxembourg and the Aceralia assets of Spain. Mittal owns 38 per cent of ArcelorMittal. He also chairs Aperam, a stainless steel manufacturer.

  The press took notice. In 2005 The Sunday Times named him "Business Person of 2006", and the Financial Times named him "Person of the Year". Time magazine called him "International Newsmaker of the Year 2006" and placed him on its "Time 100" list in 2007.

  Goldman Sachs has counted him as a board member since 2008. He sits on the executive committee of the World Steel Association. He also belongs to the World Economic Forum's International Business Council and the European Round Table of Industrialists. The Global CEO Council of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries counts him as a member too. He serves on the board of trustees of the Cleveland Clinic.

  The industry honoured him as well. In 2007 he received the Bessemer Gold Medal from IOM3 and a fellowship from King's College London. In 2008 the Government of India awarded him the Padma Vibhushan, and Forbes gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.

  231715164

• 4. Cash for Influence

  ›

  In 2002 Adam Price, a Plaid Cymru MP, obtained a letter that Tony Blair had written to the Romanian government in support of Mittal's LNM Group. LNM was then bidding to buy Romania's state-owned industry. The letter caused a stir because Mittal had given £125,000 to the British Labour Party the year before. Blair defended it as simply "celebrating the success" of a British company. Critics answered that LNM was registered in the Dutch Antilles and employed less than 1% of its workforce in the UK. They added that LNM was a major global competitor of Britain's own struggling steel industry.

  The letter also hinted that selling the firm to Mittal might smooth Romania's path into the European Union. A passage describing Mittal as "a friend" had been removed just before Blair signed.

  Poland brought a different kind of question. Mittal successfully employed the consultancy of Marek Dochnal to influence Polish officials during the 2003 privatisation of the PHS Steel Group, which was then Poland's largest. Dochnal was later arrested for bribing Polish officials on behalf of Russian agents in a separate affair.

  The gravest charge concerned safety. In December 2004-23 miners died in explosions in Mittal's mines in Kazakhstan, caused by faulty gas detectors. His own employees accused him of allowing "slave labour" conditions after multiple fatalities in those mines.

  3536123733

• 5. Rich List Swings

  ›

  Forbes ranked Mittal the third-richest person in the world in 2005, making him the first Indian citizen in the top ten of its annual list. His peak came in 2008. The Sunday Times put his wealth at £27.70 billion, and Forbes put it at $45.0 billion, which made him the fourth-wealthiest individual in the world.

  The fall was swift. By 2009 the Sunday Times estimate had dropped to £10.80 billion, and the Forbes figure to $19.30 billion. Forbes still ranked him sixth in the world in 2011. In March 2015 he sat at 82nd place. That same year Forbes called him the "57th-most powerful person" among 72 individuals on its "Most Powerful People" list. In 2016 Forbes ranked him 135th with a net worth of $8.4 billion.

  In India the picture looked steadier. In 2022 Forbes ranked him the 15th richest man in the country, with $17.8 billion. In October 2024 he was again 15th on its list of India's 100 richest tycoons, with $16.7 billion. Globally, he had slipped to 130th by that same month.

  The Sunday Times table shows how far the figure had sunk and how far it climbed back. It recorded £6.78 billion in 2020 and £14.92 billion in 2024. By 2025 its estimate stood at £15.444 billion.

  5862646681

• 6. Olympics and Football

  ›

  India won a single bronze medal at the 2000 Summer Olympics and a single silver at the 2004 Games. After watching that, Mittal set up the Mittal Champions Trust with $9 million to support ten Indian athletes with world-beating potential. In 2008 he awarded Abhinav Bindra Rs. 1.5 Crore, or Rs. 15 million, for winning India's first individual Olympic gold medal, in shooting. ArcelorMittal also supplied the steel for the ArcelorMittal Orbit, built for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

  Football drew his attention too. Mittal had emerged as a leading contender to buy and sell the Barclays Premiership clubs Wigan and Everton. On the 20th of December 2007, though, it was announced that the Mittal family had bought a 20 per cent shareholding in Queens Park Rangers. They joined Flavio Briatore and Mittal's friend Bernie Ecclestone as investors. His son-in-law, Amit Bhatia, took a seat on the board. The combined investment sparked suggestions that Mittal might be joining wealthy owners such as Roman Abramovich in pouring money into English football.

  The story at Queens Park Rangers moved on. On the 19th of February 2010, Briatore resigned as chairman and sold further shares to Ecclestone, who became the single largest shareholder. Mittal now holds three per cent of the club.

  His newest sporting purchase came in May 2026. A consortium led by Mittal and Adar Poonawalla bought the Indian Premier League franchise Rajasthan Royals for $1.65 billion. Mittal took the majority stake of 75 per cent, Poonawalla took 18 per cent, and Manoj Badale kept the rest.

  394041438

• 7. Schools and Hospitals

  ›

  In 2003 the Lakshmi Niwas Mittal and Usha Mittal Foundation joined the Government of Rajasthan to establish the LNM Institute of Information Technology in Jaipur, an autonomous non-profit university. In 2009 the Foundation and Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan founded the Usha Lakshmi Mittal Institute of Management in New Delhi. A large donation from the Foundation led SNDT Women's University to rename its Institute of Technology for Women as the Usha Mittal Institute of Technology.

  Medicine received his money as well. In 2008 the Mittals gave £15 million to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, the largest private contribution the hospital had ever received. It helped fund the new Mittal Children's Medical Centre.

  For Comic Relief, he matched the roughly £1 million raised on the celebrity special of the BBC programme The Apprentice.

  When the COVID-19 pandemic reached India in 2020, he donated ₹100 crores to the PM CARES fund.

  4445464738

• 8. Leaving London

  ›

  Vanisha Mittal's wedding in 2005 ranks as the sixth-most expensive in recorded history. Her father hosted a lavish "vegetarian reception" for her at the Palace of Versailles in France. Mittal himself is a lacto-vegetarian. Vanisha is married to Amit Bhatia, a businessman and philanthropist. In 2008 her father bought No. 9A Palace Greens in Kensington Gardens, formerly the Philippines Embassy, for £70 million, for her.

  Mittal is married to Usha Dalmia, and the couple have a son, Aditya Mittal, as well as Vanisha. His sister, Seema Lohia, married the Indonesian businessman Sri Prakash Lohia. In 2005 he also bought a colonial bungalow for $30 million at No. 22, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road in New Delhi. The street is one of the most exclusive in India and is occupied by embassies and billionaires. He rebuilt the bungalow as a new house.

  In 2025 Mittal was reported to be preparing to leave the United Kingdom, where he had lived since 1995. The reason was the UK government's decision to abolish the non-domiciled tax status, commonly called non-dom. In November 2025 The Sunday Times reported that he had paid about $200 million, or £152.7 million, for a baroque mansion in Emirates Hills, Dubai. The paper also confirmed that he is resident in Switzerland for tax purposes and is to spend much of his future in Dubai.

  1410545552