In replacing Mr Drahi on the share register, BT will be hoping it has swapped an aggressive activist with a friendlier ally who is happy to support the existing strategy.
That is because Mittal, a self-made entrepreneur, already knows the business and some of its executives well, including Harmeen Mehta, BT’s head of digital, who previously worked at his own company.
Like Drahi, Mittal also made his name in telecoms, which still forms the core of the massive Indian conglomerate he and his brothers built from a bicycle parts supplier they started in the 1970s.
But while Drahi built an empire on debt-fuelled deals and aggressive cost-cutting, Mr Mittal – though seen as a wily operator – has a reputation for backing his executives to “play for the long term”.
“When it comes to risk taking, I have my neck to offer,” he told India’s Business Standard two years ago.
“When the CEO of my company needs to take a risky decision, I will understand and put my neck in front of the shareholders, stakeholders, board etc. This combination is very powerful.”
At home, he is one of the few telecom tycoons left standing after the dawn of services in the 1990s, having navigated a series of battles with the Ambanis, India’s most prominent business family.
In the mid-2000s, Airtel successfully fought off a challenge to its market leadership from the much bigger Reliance Communications, owned by Anil Ambani.
According to Indian press reports, Mittal told his staff to knuckle down and focus on service quality and wait for their rival to make a mistake – a strategy that duly paid off.
More recently, in the mid-2010s, his company and other telecom operators including Vodafone faced an existential challenge from Jio, a new network owned by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and brother to Anil, which gained hundreds of millions of customers by offering rock-bottom prices and free data deals.
This time, Mr Mittal – now the incumbent – appealed directly to Narendra Modi, India’s new business-friendly prime minister who also shared close ties with Ambani, for reassurances about government decisions that appeared to favour his rival.
