Een van de oorzaken van de val van Mittal ligt bij de schuld waar het bedrijf onder bedolven is, iets wat ook geldt voor bij voorbeeld een onderneming als Air France/KLM, al zo'n hoogvlieger. Over dit schuldenprobleem het volgende:
"In his autobiography, "My Cross to Bear," legendary rocker Greg Allman of the Hall of Fame group "The Allman Brothers" noted, in a rare moment of introspection, that "After about my fifth wife, I realized that maybe I shouldn't be married." Despite disaster after disaster, corporations continue to pile on massive quantities of debt in ill-fated marriages. Like Greg Allman, it is soon realized just how truly expensive and draining such an event can be after tremendous costs and lost opportunities.
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ArcelorMittal is the world's largest steel company, created by a series of very expensive and counter-productive mergers and acquisitions when times were better. Now trading around $15 a share, ArcelorMittal was trading around $100 in 2008. The profit margin for ArcelorMittal is low at 1.26% and its debt-to-equity ratio is high at 0.50. By contrast, Posco (NYSE: PKX), a South Korean steel firm pretty much the same size in terms of market capitalization, has a profit margin of 15.23% and a debt-to-equity ratio of just 0.16. As a result, its shareholders benefit from much more rewarding valuations."