Profile: Lakshmi Mittal

Lakshmi Mittal is worth an estimated $25bn

Already the UK's richest resident, and the third wealthiest man on the planet, Lakshmi Mittal is poised to became the world's biggest steel-maker.

By merging his Dutch-based company Mittal Steel with Arcelor of Luxembourg after a five-month battle, the Indian entrepreneur is creating a steel group three times larger than its nearest rival.

By any yardstick, Mr Mittal's rise to riches is a remarkable story.

From modest beginnings in India, the 56-year-old's razor-sharp understanding of the steel market has enabled him to created an empire that spans the globe.

"He's the 24-carat India," Vinod Mehta, a journalist at Outlook Magazine, told the BBC's Profile programme on Radio 4.

Booming industry

Born to a poor family in the Indian state of Rajasthan in 1950, Mr Mittal established the foundations of his fortune over the past two decades by doing much of his business in the steel industry equivalent of a discount warehouse - buying the unwanted assets of other steel groups or snapping up worn out state-owned plants.

Mr Mittal's son, Aditya, told the BBC's Profile that one of the reasons Rajasthan had successful entrepreneurs was that there was very little there in the first place, forcing them to look elsewhere for business opportunities and spurring them on to succeed.

The global steel industry is currently enjoying bumper profits

Even before the merger with Arcelor is completed, Mittal Steel ships well over 40 million tonnes of steel a year from sites in 14 countries, including Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Poland, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the US.

Merging Mittal with Arcelor will enable Mr Mittal to further dominate a global industry that is currently booming, thanks in the main to fast-growing China's massive demand for steel.

The deal also shows Mr Mittal's appetite for a fight and determination to succeed.

While previously he was said to be someone who simply bought up the unwanted scraps of others, the Arcelor merger - which was initially strongly opposed by the Luxembourg firm - has shown that Mr Mittal also has the ability to complete the biggest of deals.

'Steel Maharajah'

The rapid growth of Mittal Steel has mirrored its owner's astonishing rise up the "Rich List".

Mr Mittal gave his daughter Vanisha a proper send off

Last year Mr Mittal rocketed up Forbes magazine's list of billionaires, vaulting 59 places to land at number three behind Microsoft's Bill Gates and hedge fund impresario Warren Buffett.

Now the planet's fifth-richest man is worth an estimated $25bn (£13.5bn).

So it's hardly surprising that the "Steel Maharajah" - who moved to London in 1995 - was previously better known for his expensive tastes than his business deals in the unfashionable world of heavy metal.

In fact, some of his recent personal purchases would have even had Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich checking there was enough cash in his account.

Take Mr Mittal's house, or rather his neo-Palladian mansion, in London's exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens.

Bought from Formula One tycoon Bernie Ecclestone in 2003 for £70m, it is said to be the most expensive private residence ever bought.

Many of the floors and pillars are said to be made of marble imported from the quarry used to construct the Taj Mahal.

It has Turkish baths, a ballroom, an oak-panelled picture gallery and a jewelled basement pool while security is controlled by 65 state-of-the-art CCTV cameras.

Gala wedding

But the house can be viewed as an investment for the married father of two, unlike the estimated £34m he generously spent in the summer of 2004 hosting his daughter Vanisha's wedding celebrations in France.

Houses in Kensington Palace Gardens don't come cheap

According to Indian press reports, over a thousand guests lucky enough to receive one of the 20-page, silver-plated invitations were flown in from around the world for five days of festivities.

But Mr Mittal's most notorious expenditure came in the form of a donation to the Labour party.

The £125,000 donation to the party just before the 2001 General Election sparked a major political row, dubbed 'Mittalgate".

Both the Mr Mittal and the Labour Party denied that it was connected with a letter that Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote a few weeks later, supporting the steel magnate in a deal to buy a state-owned Romanian steel firm.

Since then Mr Mittal he has kept a lower profile in the UK but the Arcleor deal has now made him something of a hero in India.

Outlook magazine's Mr Mehta explained that the successes of the bid for Arcelor has helped boost the profile of Indians globally and is getting them the respect many feel they have been denied for too long.