Lakshmi Mittal, executive chairman of the steelmaker ArcelorMittal, is ranked No. 70 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $31 billion. In May 2026 a consortium he leads bought the IPL team Rajasthan Royals.
Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born on June 15, 1950, in Sadulpur, Rajasthan, to a Marwari family. He studied at Shri Daulatram Nopany Vidyalaya in Calcutta and graduated from St. Xavier’s College with a B.Com in the first class.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 70, with $31 billion
- History: Forbes ranked him the third-richest person in the world in 2005, making him the first Indian citizen in its top ten; he was sixth in 2011, 82nd in March 2015 and 130th by October 2024
Building the Steel Empire
- 1976: at 26, he opened his first steel factory, PT Ispat Indo, in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, because India curbed steel production
- 2001: he bought steel assets in Mexico, Kazakhstan and Romania and renamed them under the Ispat name
- 2006–07: he won a hostile takeover of Arcelor, which created ArcelorMittal and gave him control of the Usinor assets in France, Arbed in Luxembourg and Aceralia in Spain
Mittal is executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world’s second-largest steelmaker, owns 38% of it and is chairman of the stainless steel maker Aperam.
Boards, Sport and Residence
- Boards: he has been on Goldman Sachs’ board since 2008 and is a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic
- Sport: he set up the Mittal Champions Trust with $9 million to back Indian athletes; in May 2026 a consortium led by Mittal and Adar Poonawalla bought the Rajasthan Royals for $1.65 billion, with Mittal holding 75% and Poonawalla 18%
- Residence: he lived in the United Kingdom from 1995 and left in 2025; he now resides in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates
Recognition
In 2006 the Financial Times named him Person of the Year and Time named him International Newsmaker of the Year, and in 2007 Time put him on its Time 100 list.
Why It Matters
ArcelorMittal supplies steel across the world, and Mittal is one of the best-known Indian-born business figures abroad.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Lakshmi Mittal (right) calling on Union Steel Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in New Delhi, May 30, 2015. Photo: Ministry of Steel, Government of India / Wikimedia Commons (GODL-India)
