ArcelorMittal CEO Title to Pass from Lakshmi Mittal to Son Aditya

The younger Mittal currently serves as president and chief financial officer of ArcelorMittal and CEO of ArcelorMittal Europe. He joined the company in 1997 from CreditSuisse’s investment banking division.

“We have worked closely together since he joined the company in 1997, indeed in recent years we have effectively been managing the company together,” Lakshmi Mittal said in a statement. “He will be taking on the effective day to day running of the company, but we will continue to work very closely together.”

Aditya Mittal lauded his father’s work to build ArcelorMittal from what was initially a greenfield rolling mill in Indonesia. He said he would center its strategy in large part around green issues, namely reducing carbon emissions.

“The biggest challenge, but also the biggest opportunity, will be to demonstrate that steel can decarbonise and indeed is the perfect material for a circular economy. This will undoubtedly be a critical driver of our strategy in the coming years and decades,” he said.

Genuino Christino will replace Aditya Mittal as chief financial officer. He joined the company in 2003 and has been head of finance since 2016, ArcelorMittal said.

ArcelorMittal was formed in 2006 by the merger of Mittal Steel and European steelmaker Arcelor. That deal created what was at the time the world’s largest steelmaker.

But Lakshmi Mittal had been working to consolidate the steel industry for decades before that mega-merger.

His first foray into consolidation came in 1989 with the lease and acquisition of a steel company in Trinidad & Tobago. The elder Mittal subsequently acquired operations in Mexico, the United States, Europe and Kazahkstan, ArcelorMittal said.

Among those deals was one for the former International Steel Group, which was acquired by Mittal Steel for more than $4 billion in 2005.

Most of the former ISG assets were sold last year to Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., which has expanded to become the largest flat-rolled steelmaker in the United States.

By Michael Cowden, Michael@SteelMarketUpdate.com