Bouquet and Ousey reconstruct the 2006 contested acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal Steel, which created the world's largest steel company and which was the largest hostile cross-border takeover attempted in Europe at the time.
The transaction had commercial and political dimensions in roughly equal measure. Lakshmi Mittal had built Mittal Steel by acquiring distressed and state-owned steel plants across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Africa and the United States and turning them around, which had made him one of the world's wealthiest people while leaving the company regarded as an outsider by the European industry. Arcelor was the product of a merger between French, Luxembourgish and Spanish producers and had close relationships with the governments involved.
The defence was substantially political. Arcelor's management characterised Mittal Steel as culturally incompatible and as a company of Indian origin despite its Dutch domicile, and the governments of France and Luxembourg intervened publicly. The board pursued a defensive merger with Severstal that would have handed control to a Russian shareholder, which shareholders rejected. Bouquet and Ousey document the shareholder pressure that eventually forced the board to negotiate.
The reporting draws on access to both sides. The book is written as a narrative rather than an analysis and does not assess whether the combination created value, which subsequent results make a fair question. It is a useful case in cross-border hostile takeovers and in the limits of political defence when institutional shareholders want a deal.
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