<div>Where are steel-baron Lakshmi Mittal’s younger brothers? After the merger of JSW Ispat with JSW Steel last month, the stake of Pramod and Vinod Mittal became insignificant in the joint entity. They are not visibly present in any other business also. </div><div> </div><div>After steering the erstwhile Ispat Industries for about 15 years, the Mittal brothers sold off a substantial portion of their shares to Sajjan Jindal-run JSW group in 2010. Later, JSW increased its holding to 46.75 per cent and finally by the beginning of June, Ispat was merged with JSW.</div><div> </div><div>Mittal brothers were on the board of the combined entity JSW Ispat before the merger. Pramod was the vice chairman. With the merger, their stake would have fallen to about 3 per cent. But with the brothers having been offloading their shares in the last few months, there is no clarity on their stake in JSW Steel. Also, they would have naturally lost their director roles after the merger, say market sources.</div><div> </div><div>Post-merger, Jindal family holds a little over 35 per cent stake in JSW Steel. The second largest shareholder Japan’s JFE Steel holds 14.92 per cent.</div><div> </div><div>Ispat’s major asset was a 3.3 million tonne a year integrated steel plant at Dolvi in Maharashtra. But it was struggling because of the expensive raw material purchases. Even JSW has failed to settle the issues at Dolvi and finally decided to merge for a cost saving of Rs 250 crore.</div><div> </div><div>nevin (dot) john (at) abp (dot) in</div>