Lakshmi Mittal is running a little late. This is not surprising as he is orchestrating the biggest deal in the history of the steel industry, meeting European premiers, Brussels bureaucrats, institutional investors, hedge funds and the press in an exhaustive effort to persuade them of the merit of his audacious pound 12.8 bn move for Arcelor, the gleaming champion of European steel. He arrives, unflustered and without fanfare. This does not surprise, either. Despite his corporate audacity, and although he bears all the trappings of the modern billionaire - the pound 70m house next to Kensington Palace, the Philip Green-style parties for his children's weddings -this is no identikit tycoon. There is no cigar, and no ostentatious executive items in his dark and demure Berkeley Square office. Although it is on the seventh floor, the view is not as good as the one from his PR company down the road.
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