LONDON - Lakshmi Mittal is sure he's going to win - and he is not planning to share.

Mittal, the chief executive of Mittal Steel, on Friday derided the corporate governance standards of Arcelor - the company he has been trying to buy for five months - and dismissed the notion that he could take a minority stake alongside the Russian steel magnate Aleksei Mordashov.

The combination of Arcelor and Mittal Steel is a "steel man's dream," Lakshmi Mittal said during an interview in Mittal's London offices on posh Berkeley Square. Anything else would be a "tragedy" for the world's steel industry.

Tragedy seems to be on Mittal's doorstep, as the clock ticks down to a deadline for Arcelor shareholders to tender their shares toward a combination with the Russian steel maker Severstal.

The €13 billion, or $16.8 billion, deal, which Arcelor's management seems determined to push through despite a growing shareholder rebellion, will be formally approved on June 28 unless a historically unprecedented number of investors reject it.

Mittal said the tempestuous situation was nothing less than a "wake-up call for Europe" regarding shareholders rights - and the duties that European boards owe their investors. "The management are only tenants" of the company, he said. The "boards are the trustees and shareholders are the owners."

The deadline could mark the end of a long slog for Lakshmi Mittal.

Since he began his unwanted bid in January he has been the target of personal and industrial slights from the Arcelor management and some European officials, who criticized everything from the quality of the steel that he makes to his grammar, including several racially motivated insults.

Mittal coolly dismissed those slights as "immature" and said markets should forget about the personal comments directed toward him and his company, and think instead about benefits Mittal Steel could bring Arcelor.

The quick refocus on business is typical of Mittal. His clash with Arcelor management has served as a vivid example of the conflicts between fast-growing corporations with their roots in emerging-market countries, and old-line managers in slow-growth industrialized countries.

But Lakshmi Mittal himself is reluctant to be drawn on the personalities and the philosophy of the subject, and has never responded specifically to the insulting comments. He said cheerfully that he lets out any frustrations during hourlong walks through Hyde Park in London or at the gym.

Whether he will ever see any fruit from the past five months of labor will be decided over the next few weeks, sure to be rocky, in Luxembourg, Arcelor's home base.

Arcelor investors are threatening to sue over the Severstal deal, and they have demanded an extraordinary general meeting to set up a more conventional vote on it, but anything they do decide at that meeting is not legally binding.

Arcelor's management has given no indication that it will give in to shareholders demands, and Severstal insists that changes are impossible.

"We have a contract that has only two outs," said Robert Miller of the investment bank Miller Mathis, who is working with Severstal. "One out is antitrust regulators, the second is 50 percent of shareholders vote the deal down."

Arcelor's board cannot change the contract because of a shareholder letter, he said.

Hoping for a break in the logjam, Mittal Steel, based in Rotterdam, also submitted its business plan to Arcelor on Friday, the last in a long series of Arcelor's demands. The move may finally force Arcelor to the table, some analysts said.

But Lakshmi Mittal is not as positive about Arcelor's past actions.

"Clearly, it's been the intention of Arcelor all along to frustrate our transaction with road blocks and delays," he said.

Mittal did get some encouraging news Friday.

The European Commission conditionally cleared Mittal's offer of antitrust concerns, noting that there would be some overlap in heavy beam steel production.

Mittal plans to sell Arcelor mills in Germany and Italy and one of its own in Poland to allay those concerns, if victorious.

In addition, French officials, who were scathing in their criticism of the Mittal deal at the beginning, appeared to cast doubt on the value of the Severstal combination.

"You will not hear me say that I have a preference for one or another deal," Thierry Breton, the French finance minister, told a news conference Friday, Reuters reported.

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