RPT-PROFILE-ENRC's Sittard looking west from Kazakh mines
(Refiles to remove typographical error from paragraph 5)
LONDON, March 26 (Reuters) - A family tradition has taken Johannes Sittard from a German classroom to the helm of one of the newest entrants to the FTSE 100 share index, mining firm Eurasian Natural Resources Corp (ENRC.L).
The company, which moved up to the blue-chip board of the London stock market on Wednesday, accounts for 4 percent of Kazakhstan's GDP and is one of the world's biggest producers of the raw materials that go into steel -- a material close to the chief executive's heart.
"My grandfather and father were both steelmakers, and so I became a steelmaker," he told Reuters in response to emailed questions.
"All of my personal targets early on were bound up with that industry. I grew up in the shadow of a steelmill in Germany."
Sittard, 64, began his career as an academic at the Technical University of Clausthal-Zellerfeld in the 1970s, where he gained a doctorate in metallurgy, before joining steelmaker Ispat International.
Under the leadership of Lakshmi Mittal, one of the world's richest men, the firm went on to become ArcelorMittal (ISPA.AS).
The Indian billionaire, known for audacious mergers and acquisitions that have put his firm at the top of the global steelmaking tree, left his mark on Sittard.
"I do admire Lakshmi Mittal, for his ability to make decisions on the basis of the big picture and without getting lost in the detail," Sittard says. "He has good instincts. He is prepared to take risks, unlike those who worry too much about covering their backs."
OUTPERFORMER
Like Sittard, Mittal's family background is in steel.
"More than I admire Lakshmi, I admire his father. He was the reason I worked for Mittal," Sittard says.
Sittard joined the firm now known as ENRC in 2001.
The company began life as a group of assets bought by company founders Patokh Chodiev, Alijan Ibragimov and Alexander Machkevitch during Kazakhstan's wave of privatisations in the mid-1990s. Continued...
