Lakshmi Mittal

Ispat International is part of the LNM Group, the 4th largest steel producer in the world. They gave £16,000 to the Labour Party in 1997. The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ispat International and the LNM Group is Lakshmi Nivas Mittal. He gave £125,000 to the Labour Party in May 2001. His personal wealth is estimated at £1 billion.

Ispat International is a holding company based in the Netherlands which owns a number of other steel producing companies in the USA, Mexico, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Germany and Ireland. Most of these companies were bought in Government privatisation schemes. Ispat International made $647 million gross profit in 1998.

Lakshmi Mittal's stake in Ispat is worth about £260 million. He also owns Ispat Karmet, the former State-owned Kazakhstan steel industry (the largest single employer in the country), which is worth £300 million. He owns a third of B4U, which operates Asian television channels on Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB. His private investment company, LNM Capital, controls assets worth £360 million. He owns a £6 million house in Bishop's Avenue in London (known as 'Millionaire's Row'). He is known as a tough businessman who makes his money from buying up run-down State-owned companies and then slashes jobs and 'squeezes greater productivity' out of the remaining workers, which has led to conflict with steel unions.