Will Sunil Mittal beat Laxmi Mittal and Ratan Tata at their game?

Laxmi Mittal entered into $34 billion deal with Arcelor to create world's largest steel behemoth.
Tatas entered into a $12 billion deal with Corus for India's largest cross border deal ever.

Now Sunil Mittal has initiated a $23 billion transaction with MTN to create world's fourth largest telecom operator by number of subscribers - 200 million+. And this would indeed be the biggest M&A transaction witnessed by India Inc so far.

Most analysts consider this to be a prudent move on part of Sunil Mittal despite Laxmi Mittal and Tatas struggling to manage their mega deals. There are various reasons for it.

- Telecom is still a growing industry as compared to mature industries such as Steel or Auto.

- Majority of operations of Airtel and MTN are in India, Africa and West Asia, where there is tremendous growth opportunity on account of growing mobile penetration.

- Airtel and MTN both have been growing their subscriber base aggressively and are market leaders on home turf. Airtel is undisputed leader in India while MTN with 36% market share is the second largest player in South Africa. MTN has a wider subscriber base with significant presence in Central and West Africa.

- While Tatas and Laxmi Mittal closed their deals at the peak of valuations, Airtel - MTN deal is being done in a more sane environment. Already Airtel is valuing MTN about 15% less than last year's offer which did not materialise owing to differences in the ownership structure of merged entity.

- Owing to the nature of telecom business there will be significant scope of cost savings by employing common suppliers. Part of Airtel's fabulous success in Indian market is attributed to its innovative outsourcing agreements with principle suppliers such as IBM.

Ratan Tata recently admitted that with hindsight Corus deal was an expensive one and too bullish. Bruised by acquisition of Corus and JLR, Tata group is fighting hard a credit crunch across the group. Laxmi Mittal is battling record loss and huge debt at Arcelor Mittal to keep afloat.

Sunil Mittal may have the last laugh by closing this mammoth deal in the sunrise telecom sector. He seems truly on his way to be the global telecom czar.