Lakshmi Mittal is very smart. -- Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Lakshmi Mittal deserves the hype.

Lately I’ve slagged the myth of the CEO — the idea that CEOs have such incredible juju that they must be paid giant sums of money and have their egos catered to at every turn. For the most part, I’m convinced that this is correct, because for the most part, CEOs are just high-level corporate executives with fancier nameplates. We all know good senior executives and bad ones, smart ones and dumb ones, etc. What you get with most CEOs is just a slightly better cut of the run of the mill. In my humble opinion.

But then there are some folks who just seem to get it — who are made for it. It’s no one thing about them that sets them apart; it’s everything.

ArcelorMittal just handed in very strong results, especially impressive given the shaky results of other (i.e. smaller) steel makers, and considering the size of the merger that created the company last year. The company’s not perfect, and they warn that next quarter won’t be as strong, but I credit their high performance to the very special qualities of Lakshmi Mittal, who seems so comfortable and so superior in his role that it’s like he’s playing a different game than everyone else.