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Now the company that had been born in India had two major foreign operations, but that was just the beginning. The global steel industry had been in a slump for a quarter of a century due to excess capacity and slow demand growth as substitute materials replaced steel in a number of applications, but Lakshmi saw opportunity in purchasing the assets of distressed companies on the cheap. His belief was that the global steel industry was about to turn a corner, driven in large part not only by sustained economic growth in developed nations, but also by growing demand in newly industrializing nations including China and his own native India. He saw all sorts of opportunities for buying poorly run companies as they came up for sale, injecting them with capital, improving their efficiency by getting them to adapt modern production technology, and taking advantage of the coming boom in steel demand. He also saw the opportunity to use the purchasing power of a global steel company to drive down the price it would have to pay for raw material inputs. In 1992 Lakshmi made his next move, buying Sibalsa of Mexico, a state-owned steel company that was being
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By this time, Lakshmi was hungry for more international growth, but his company was capital constrained. So he decided to take it public, but not in his native India or Indonesia, where the liquidity of the capital markets was limited. Instead, 1997 he moved the company’s headquarters to Rotterdam, and then offered stock in Mittal Steel for sale to the public through both the Amsterdam and New York stock exchanges, raising $776 million in the process. With capital from the IPO, Mittal purchased two more German steel makers in 1997. This was followed in 1998 by the acquisition of Inland Steel Company, a U.S. steel maker. Over the next few years, more acquisitions followed in France, Algeria, and Poland among other nations. In 2005, Mittal purchased International Steel, a company formed from the integration of troubled U.S. steel makers that had been in bankruptcy. By this time Lakshmi’s prediction had come true; global demand for steel was booming again for the first time in a generation, driven in large part by demand in China, and steel prices were hitting record
By this time, Lakshmi was hungry for more international growth, but his company was capital constrained. So he decided to take it public, but not in his native India or Indonesia, where the liquidity of the capital markets was limited. Instead, 1997 he moved the company’s headquarters to Rotterdam, and then offered stock in Mittal Steel for sale to the public through both the Amsterdam and New York stock exchanges, raising $776 million in the process. With capital from the IPO, Mittal purchased two more German steel makers in 1997. This was followed in 1998 by the acquisition of Inland Steel Company, a U.S. steel maker. Over the next few years, more acquisitions followed in France, Algeria, and Poland among other nations. In 2005, Mittal purchased International Steel, a company formed from the integration of troubled U.S. steel makers that had been in bankruptcy. By this time Lakshmi’s prediction had come true; global demand for steel was booming again for the first time in a generation, driven in large part by demand in China, and steel prices were hitting record