Product Description

COLD STEEL is the gripping story of the world's biggest and most hard-fought industry takeover of recent years, an epic corporate battle that would send shockwaves through the political corridors of Europe, excite the world's financial markets, enrich thirty hedge funds and transform the global steel industry. In 2006, the two largest steel-producers went head to head in a bitter battle for total market domination. Lakshmi Mittal, a Calcutta-born industrialist who had raised himself up from humble beginnings to become the world's fourth-richest man, proposes a friendly merger with rival Arcelor, a pan-European company whose interested parties include the governments of Spain, Luxembourg and Belgium. Arcelor's mercurial CEO, Frenchman Guy Dolle, firmly refuses, and the scene is set for a massive hostile takeover involving billions of dollars of finance, government and shareholder manoeuvring, and accusations of jingoism and double-dealing. Fast-paced and electrifying, COLD STEEL brings to life the cut and thrust of big business at war.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #194998 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
'Tim Bouquet was the first British journalist to write a major profile of Mittal, while Byron Ousey was a PR adviser to the Luxembourg government, one of Arcelor's biggest shareholders. Together they are admirably qualified to guide us through the myriad twists and turns of this compelling business saga and have produced an enormously entertaining read.' Christopher Silvester, Daily Express 'Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey have written an account of the takeover in the style of a thriller. Cold Steel describes the often brutal and chaotic five-month battle between Mittal and Arcelor. The combatants are described as though starring in a fictional work of industrial espionage.' Bob Jones, Management Today 'A rare, insider's account of lots of people making millions... The book reads like a thriller, with each side trying to rope in other steel companies on both sides of the Atlantic as allies... As this book shows, money and business logic prevailed in the end over politics and protection.' The Economist

About the Author
Tim Bouquet is a journalist, writer, editor, broadcaster and traveller. He contributes to leading titles including the Telegraph Magazine and The Times Magazine. Byron Ousey was at the heart of the Mittal v. Arcelor battle, advising the government of Luxembourg, where Arcelor was based.

Customer Reviews

Mittal's Epic Struggle for Control of European Steel
At a time when the emperors of Wall Street wealth creation are looking increasingly naked, Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey's Cold Steel provides an inside glimpse of the work of a visionary long term industrial value creator, Lakshmi Mittal. In building the Mittal Steel empire, the émigré from Rajasthan in India has made a series of bold, long term bets on the reshaping of the global steel industry. None were bolder than his bid to buy Europe's establishment giant, Arcelor.

Cold Steel, captures the audacity of the bid, the lengths to which Europe's establishment at first closed ranks to repel the Indian raider and then folded under Mr Mittal's charming persuasion - and the frantic behind the scenes re-alignment of political and money interests coordinated by an army of PR and corporate finance advisers.

The book has it all. The undignified sight of old European money and influence trying to hang on beyond its time, the racist taunts and the inexorable sense that this was a deal that Mittal was always going to shepherd home.

While Cold Steel too briefly skates over the first 20 years of Mittal's rise in the steel business - surely there is a fascinating story still to be told there - Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey have, in fact achieved the impossible. They have turned the gritty world of steel production and 20 year deals into a page turner ... an industrial equivalent of a bodice ripper ... and they have pieced together an extraordinary once in a lifetime fly on the wall account of a transaction that represents a changing of the guard.

LIKE A THRILLER
I know nothing about - and indeed have very little interest in - the world of billionaires and global takeovers, but I found COLD STEEL a mesmerising read. The authors have somehow contrived to make an extremely complicated financial story comprehensible to people like me. The book is full of larger-than-life characters and reads like the best kind of thriller. And the most amazing thing about it is that it's all true.

A literary "Master Blaster!!!
Crash!! Bang!! Wallop!! In the best literary sense. The most exciting read I have had in decades and devoured in one reading session. Just goes to prove that fact will always surpass fiction given even literary presentation. What a thriller; at times I could hardly read fast enough I was so anxious to discover how the next twist in the drama unfolded. I did manage to contain my usual habit of skipping and reading the last page before I finished the first chapter. Full credit then for keeping this flighty reader constantly on track with the tightrope tenacity of the writing. The authors deserve sales of a million copies. To borrow from Mad Max - a real literary Master Blaster!!!