Slowdown effect: ArcelorMittal says no to M&As

After creating the world's biggest steel empire mostly through merger and acquisitions, NRI billionaire Lakshmi Mittal has decided to apply brakes on his takeover drive as a fallout of the global economic slowdown.

ArcelorMittal is the world's single steel company to have attained a size of over 100 billion dollars and most of the credit goes to its numerous merger and acquisition deals.

However, to tackle the changing market conditions, the company in a regulatory filing said, it is now "curtailing merger and acquisition activity".
  
In May 2008 ArcelorMittal, whose CFO and Lakshmi Mittal's son Aditya used to have an 80-page folder listing hundreds of potential M&A targets, had received shareholders' approval for expanding its equity capital to meet the firm's future M&A requirements.

The company's plans to go slow on M&As comes in sharp contrast to its earlier stated position of continuously being on the look-out for potential opportunities.

At an Extraordinary General Meeting on May 13, 2008, the shareholders had authorised the board to raise the company's share capital, so that it is in a position to issue shares for entering into potential growth opportunities such as M&As.