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Arcelor’s response, when it came, was non-committal, although it drew attention to the “hostile character of this move that takes place without prior discussions or consultations between both companies”. Dollé jumped on a plane back from Canada, and will join the Arcelor board of directors at an emergency meeting today.

Sources suggest the offer is likely to be rejected tomorrow morning, with the board attacking Mittal’s business record in its defence.

Analysts suggest the French government, notoriously sensitive to changes in ownership of strategically important issues, may also get involved. The steel industry’s biggest-ever deal may be about to get red hot.

MITTAL’s audacious bid for Arcelor provides a suitably grand denouement to one of the great business sagas of recent years. While his rise is hardly a rags-to-riches tale — his father was prominent in the Indian steel industry — he has come from inauspicious beginnings to dominate the world steel business thanks to a 30-year whirlwind of single-minded, high-risk, globetrotting deals.

Steel has brought him immense personal wealth and a measure of fame in Britain. His fortune is now estimated at

()£15 billion, making him No 1 on the Sunday Times Rich List of Britain’s wealthiest citizens. He pushed Roman Abramovich, the Russian tycoon who owns Chelsea football club and has a fortune of £7.5 billion, into a distant second place.

His wealth has brought him firmly into the public spotlight. The tabloids slavered over the opulent wedding celebrations for his daughter Vanisha, which cost a reputed $60m and included an event at Versailles and a concert by Kylie Minogue.

He has a close relationship with Britain’s ruling elite, having declared himself a supporter of Tony Blair and New Labour. His gift of £125,000 to the party became a cause célèbre when it emerged that Blair had written a letter to the Romanian government in support of Mittal taking over Sidex, the national steel producer. The accusations of cronyism annoyed Mittal, but were not enough to prevent him giving Labour another £2m in July.

The Mittal legend starts in 1975, when he was on his way with a friend to a holiday in Japan. His father asked him to stop in Indonesia, then under the authoritarian Suharto regime.

Mittal senior had bought property there with a view to building a plant, but thought better of it. But Lakshmi, then 25, had other ideas. He thought the plant was worth a try, and received his father’s permission to go ahead.

Indonesia led him unwittingly to his path of international expansion. Looking to secure a supply of raw materials for his new plant, he went on the hunt for a plant that could produce direct-reduced iron.

He found it in the unlikely location of Trinidad and Tobago. The Caribbean island nation had built a plant that was now struggling. Ministers were looking for help, and Mittal seized the chance.

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