Arcelor Mittal to look for new acquisitions

Luxembourg, Aug 30: Global steel giant Arcelor Mittal should be fully integrated by the end of next year and will continue to keep its eyes open for new acquisitions, the head of the soon-to-be merged company said.

''We will expand further. As already said it is not that we will wait until the integration has been completed and the debts are erased,'' Chief Executive Roland Junck told Luxembourg's TV listings magazine Telecran.

Junck said that the first phase of integrating the two companies would last six months.

''In a year and a half it must be completed,'' he said in his first press interview since being named head of the steel giant at the start of August.

Arcelor agreed to be taken over by Mittal in late June after five months of bitter resistance. Mittal, controlled by billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, now owns close to 94 percent of the Luxembourg-based company.

Junck told the magazine he did not see himself as a transition figure who was paving the way for Lakshmi's son Aditya, who is chief financial officer of the combined group.

''Aditya Mittal is a member of the management board and this is led by the CEO. That is clear,'' Junck said.

Junck insisted the climate between the once hostile parties was good. He added that he had not liked some comments made during the heat of the takeover battle.

Junck also affirmed that Arcelor Mittal would be based in Luxembourg.

''No one in Luxembourg had thought that would be so,'' he said.

The combined company will produce about 10 percent of the world's steel and have a joint turnover of some 55 billion euros and a total worldwide staff of 334,000, according to 2005 data.

REUTERS