Your remarks against Mr Mittal have been seen by many in India as racist. How do you react to that?
It is strange. What I said is, Mittal Steel is not an Indian firm. It does not have assets in India but intends to invest a lot in the future. I do not have a problem with Mr Mittal. I have deep respect for him for what he has achieved.
India for us is important. We have been partnering with Tata Steel for at least 4 years and we have a partnership with the Jindals too. We have a one of our subsidiaries involved in engineering in India. We want to invest in India because India will be in the next decade a very important country for steel after China.
But when Mr Mittal bid for Arcelor, you came out very strongly against it and said Mittal Steel was an "organisation of the past". You also said Lakshmi Mittal's company was "full of Indians".
I said it. But it is a fact. It is not criticism. Many people are saying, for instance, that Arcelor is full of French.
But it seemed you were making this point that it was not good for Europe to have a firm led by an Indian businessman. It came across very strongly and you also said Mr Mittal was a seducer who did not always say the truth and did not play by the rules.
I said he did not say the truth in the hostile bid. He tried to explain that he wanted to be friendly. But he did not act in a friendly manner. He never tried to get in touch with me explaining how to propose a friendly bid. That was why I said he never says the truth.
But aren't really hostile bids the way of the free market? Arcelor itself has been in a hostile bid for Canadian Dofasco for the last 4 months.
You cannot say that you want to be friendly when you act as Mittal steel acts.
Just take the example of Dofasco Canada. The first time I had a meeting with the Dofasco management was in May 2005. We proposed to the company's board a strategic plan. We discussed the offer for 6 months with the management. We failed to agree and the board told us that it was just a matter of value and that it was unsolicited.
With Mr Mittal, we had a discussion for four minutes during a dinner where he did not ask me to give anything to the board and he did not present any industrial plan. That is a huge difference, according to me.
But he has said recently that he will like to have friendly talks with the Arcelor management.
Yes. But he did not try to do that. I had a meeting with him two weeks ago at the World Steel Organisation. We had dinner together. He never approached me to discuss this deal. He did not want to be friendly. But it is not the key point.
You have the right to make a hostile bid. The shareholder has to decide. I am not against hostile bids but do not say that it is friendly when you act like he did.
You have been laying a lot of stress on cultural differences. What exactly do you mean by this?
Culture is not linked to any country and to passports. It is the culture of a company. We have been successful in the merger of a multi-cultural company -- French, Belgian, German and Spanish "" and there are differences of culture.
It is clear that in the way Mr Mittal manages his company, he has been very successful. Value and culture are very different and they are not linked to the passport and origin of Mr Mittal.
Then what really is the difference?
There is a huge difference between the way companies are managed but there are more differences regarding their models. We specialise in iron products.
He specialises in commodities. I think his model is coming to an extremity because he has been strongly involved in acquiring old-fashioned assets and improving them a little bit. It is not at all the way we are proceeding. I think it is very important to understand that.
You said this bid was not good for the shareholders of Arcelor and for company employees. You even went to the trade unions, telling them that there will be thousands of jobs losses.
I never said that. I said it was not good for shareholders and it was not good for stakeholders. Now more and more people are convinced that the bid is not good for shareholders.
So then, the family is the main problem for you?
It is not a problem for me, it is a problem for the shareholders.
