ArcelorMittal S.A. is a Luxembourg-based multinational steel manufacturing corporation headquartered in Luxembourg City. It was formed in 2006 from the takeover and merger of Arcelor by Indian-owned Mittal Steel. ArcelorMittal is the second largest steel producer in the world, with an annual crude steel production of 88 million metric tonnes . It is ranked 197th in the 2022 Fortune Global 500 ranking of the world's largest corporations. It directly and indirectly employs around 200,000 people and its market capital is $25 billion. The total value of company assets is estimated to be around $100 billion.
History
ArcelorMittal was formed from the acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal Steel; Mittal Steel was in turn formed from the merger of ISPAT International and LNM Holdings. The company traces its history back to 1976.
2006–2008: Formation and scalebacks
ArcelorMittal was created by the takeover of Western European steel maker Arcelor (Spain, France, and Luxembourg) by Indian-owned multinational steel maker Mittal Steel in 2006, at a cost of €40.37 per share, approximately $33 billion total. Mittal Steel launched a hostile takeover bid, which replaced a previously planned merger between Arcelor and Severstal that had lacked sufficient shareholder approval.
The resulting merged business was named ArcelorMittal and was headquartered in Luxembourg City. The resulting firm produced approximately 10% of the world's steel, and was by far the world's largest steel company. Total revenues in 2007 were $105 billion.
By February 2008, the company had 320,000 employees in 60 countries. In October 2008, the market capitalisation of ArcelorMittal was over $30 billion, after peaking at $32.5 billion in September 2008. At the end of 2008, the company reported operating income of around $12 billion.
In December 2008, ArcelorMittal announced several plant sales, to which it had been ordered by U.S. antitrust authorities as a condition of approval of Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor SA, including the Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna, New York, to the Russian company Severstal. Other plants were closed by the company due to economic reasons, including LTV Steel in Hennepin, Illinois. After purchase of Kryvorizhstal, Ukraine's largest steel producer, employment was scaled back from 57,000 employees to 30,000.
2011–2014: Losses and Senegal agreement
In 2010, the company's operating income had fallen to $4.9 billion, with sales down 10 per cent from the year earlier, and income down 50 per cent as steel prices slumped. In 2011, the company began curtailing its European production to match the reduced demand for steel. It also sold Skyline Steel and Astralloy to a rival, Nucor, for $605 million. On 26 January 2011, the stainless steel division split off as a new company, Aperam. , due to overcapacity and reduced demand in Europe, it had idled 9 of 25 blast furnaces; in October 2012 it permanently shut down two blast furnaces at Florange, France. On 31 October 2012, the company reported a third-quarter loss of $709 million as compared to a $659 million profit for the same period a year ago, citing the slow down in China's economy. In 2012 ArcelorMittal had $22 billion of debt.
In January 2013, ArcelorMittal bid $1.5 billion to acquire ThyssenKrupp AG's rolling mill in Calvert, Alabama, United States. On 26 February 2014, ThyssenKrupp sold their Calvert carbon steel facility to ArcelorMittal and Nippon Steel for $1.55 billion, as a new joint venture. The facility was renamed AM/NS Calvert through the 50/50 joint partnership with Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. The firm also entered into a $2.2 billion contract to develop an iron ore deposit in Senegal. This included construction of a railway line. After it stalled on the contract and failed to build according to schedule, the Government of Senegal sued. In September 2013, the government of Senegal won a court case before an international tribunal to rescind a $2.2 billion deal with ArcelorMittal after the company suspended work on an iron ore mine in the country. In June 2014, the International Chamber of Commerce's arbitration court in Paris awarded Senegal $150 million.