Lakshmi Mittal will become executive chairman and continue to lead Board of Directors
Aditya Mittal will be the new group chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal, replacing his father and company founder Lakshmi Mittal, the steel giant ArcelorMittal announced on Thursday. Lakshmi Mittal will become executive chairman of the Luxembourg-based company and will continue to lead the Board of Directors. The 45-year-old Aditya Mittal is currently the chief financial officer of the company and also heads the company’s European business.
“The board unanimously agreed that Aditya Mittal is the natural and right choice to be the company’s chief executive,” the company’s chairman Lakshmi Mittal said.
“We have worked closely together since he joined the company in 1997, indeed in recent years we have effectively been managing the company together,” Mr Mittal added.
Aditya Mittal joined his father’s firm from Credit Suisse, where he worked in the investment banking division. He was involved in the 2006 merger of Arcelor and Mittal Steel, which created the current company.
“Mr (Lakshmi ) Mittal built ArcelorMittal from a greenfield rolling mill in Indonesia to become the world’s leading steel company,” the incoming CEO Aditya Mittal said. “It is an extraordinary achievement and I am privileged to have witnessed and been part of so much of that journey.”
The announcement came as the company said it had reduced it’s net loss in 2020 by a factor of three to $733 million, even though sales dropped by a quarter. Despite the worldwide coronavirus slump, ArcelorMittal returned to profit in the fourth quarter of last year.
Looking forward to 2021, the company expects global steel demand to increase by between 4.5 and 5.5 percent, after it dropped by one percent in 2020.
Lakshmi Mittal said he was proud of the group’s performance and that he was pleased to be handing on the reins “in a position of relative strength.”
ArcelorMittal is the world’s leading steel and mining company, with a presence in 60 countries and primary steelmaking facilities in 17 countries.