CompanyWatch - Why Is Sterlite On An Acquisition Binge?
sterlite.com
CEO Anil Agarwal is using the M&A route to turn his company into a global non-ferrous metals conglomerate.
Kojak-like, he looms over a spacious office on the second floor of a building in Berkeley Square. Sounds like an inconsequential address, which it would be but for the fact that it also houses the offices of one of the world's richest Indians. Comparisons may be odious, but Sterlite Industries' low-profile CEO, Anil Agarwal, and Ispat International's hi-profile CEO, L.N. Mittal, are inviting them by walking through the same glass doors to work every morning in London. Besides their ages, they share at least one other interest: buying ailing metals companies, and turning them around. That's where the parallels end.
For, the 46-year-old Agarwal, with assets of Rs 2,700 crore, has a ten-fold path to traverse before he lands in the 46-year-old Mittal's œ2.80 billion (Rs 20,000 crore) league. Still, bouncing back from his abortive attempt to take over the Rs 1,169-crore INDAL from Alcan in June, 1998, the Sterlite CEO is trying to make it up to himself. He has spent the last 12 months turning non-resident, annexing a 100-year-old copper-mine in Australia for $6.30 million, buying a stake in a gold-and-copper mine in Armenia for an undisclosed sum-and eyeing a copper smelter in Mexico. ...
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