The saga that cast Lakshmi Mittal on one side and Guy Dollé on another brought much excitement to the staid world of steel industry. This wasn’t a merger battle between two grey businessmen in black suits, fighting over a featureless product made in a hot furnace. This conflict between Mittal and the then chairman and CEO of Arcelor had the drama of a cultural clash, it was tinged with racial overtones, and it made the broader point of the historic rise of Asia and the transfer of wealth, influence, and power from the West to the East.
Deal maker: Mittal’s business decisions get little scrutiny in the book; it has more anecdotes than analysis.
Tim Bouquet and Byron Ousey have written what they claim to be an authoritative account of that battle, called Cold Steel: Britain’s Richest Man and the Multi-billion Dollar Battle for a Global Empire.
Ousey brings his vast experience as a public relations expert, and insider’s knowledge, having advised the Luxembourg government how to respond to this fast-moving story, something on a scale far bigger than what the territory had known. Bouquet is a journalist, whose accomplishments include being the first British reporter to have been granted full access to the Mittals, who cooperated with the writing of the book.
Books by insiders, or people close to protagonists, can be extremely useful, as the writers are able to provide a close look at the way deals are structured and empires change hands. They may not be entirely accurate — as the kerfuffle over Scott McClellan’s memoirs shows — and are, by definition, self-serving. The extent to which the two parties — the Mittals and the Luxembourg government — were involved with any vetting is not known, but the book reads as if it seeks not to offend anyone. Nothing wrong with that in particular: Offending the subject is not the prerequisite of such books, and there are sound legal reasons to get books vetted and maintain a civil tone. But it seems as if the book is written with punches pulled, which drains it of the drama the story naturally has.
Such books run the risk of overstating the positives and understating mistakes. If Brian Burroughs and John Helyar can justly claim to have written one of the finest business books in a long time — Barbarians at the Gate — it is because the two journalists reported the story of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, and not only did they provide readers with an exposure to the Wall Street culture, but also to personalities such as F. Ross Johnson and Henry Kravis. With a fascinating eye for detail, delving deep into formative experiences in the lives of people being written about, Messers Burroughs and Helyar helped us understand why the people acted the way they did. Cold Steel does not help us do that. We can infer from the anecdotes; the analysis is missing.