A few days after Mittal Steel announced plans to take over Arcelor, CEO Guy Dolle said Mittal Steel made 'eau de cologne' while Arcelor created perfume. Now for the past six months, Dolle's strategy has been "anything but Mittal". He believes there is no industrial logic for Arcelor's merger with Mittal and he questioned corporate governance standards within Mittal Steel.

Mittal steals the steel show

He even resisted Mittal's revised offer of an additional euro 7.6 billion or $9.5 billion in cash and no controlling interest in the merged entity. Instead, he sought a merger with Russian steel giant Severstal at euro 44 per share and euro 1.5 billion in cash to create the world's largest steel conglomerate.

"Negotiation-discussion with SeverStal started long back. Taking advantage of the partnership, we have already launched in galvanising for automotives. Later on, what I also saw is that we didn't succeed after discussing many times.

Arcelor accepts Mittal's bid

"We spent a number of nights to agree on the values and percentages and so on. We discussed in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and it started again after the Mittal Steel offer. And we can say that the Mittal Steel's offer has been the catalyst in this negotiation," said Guy Dolle, CEO, Arcelor.

But recently Mittal and Arcelor resumed talks and Dolle has got Mittal to agree to pay substantially more than the euro 33 per share he had offered. First to euro 37 per share, and then, what's believed to be euro 40.44 euros per share. Shareholders are unlikely to forget that in a hurry.