PROFILE-Vale's Agnelli, from prodigy banker to mining king

By Andrei Khalip

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 14 (Reuters) - When Roger Agnelli was structuring merger and acquisition deals in the 1990s as a young Brazilian investment banker, few would have imagined he would end up steering one of the world's top mining companies from one international takeover to another.

And that's simply because it was hard to picture Brazil's Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (VALE5.SA: Quote, Profile, Research) (RIO.N: Quote, Profile, Research), then a bloated state-run enterprise, embarking on a global expansion drive, which its CEO Agnelli masterminded and spearheaded since 2001.

Friends and rivals alike say a nose for great deals, vast capital markets experience, charisma and perseverance -- mixed with aggressiveness and a management style some call authoritarian -- are key attributes that Agnelli brought to Vale, helping to turn it into a global powerhouse.

The youthful-looking, 48-year-old athletic executive with curly black hair has come to symbolize the new Vale, which is embarking on a seemingly unstoppable expansion cycle and diversifying from its core business of iron ore into other metals.

With 14 acquisitions under Agnelli, including the $18 billion purchase of Canadian nickel producer Inco in 2006, Vale is now in complex negotiations to acquire Swiss-based rival Xstrata (XTA.L: Quote, Profile, Research) in what could become one of the world's biggest takeovers, valued at more than $90 billion.

"He did a fantastic job taking advantage of the timing and realizing that a company like Vale had to expand abroad," said Eike Batista, a billionaire Brazilian mining entrepreneur who in 2005 sold his big stake in Canada's Canico to Vale, giving it the large Onca Puma nickel deposit in Brazil.

"The timing of the Canico acquisition was excellent, Inco was even better, just a few months before prices tripled. He's the right person at the right place at the right time," said Batista, whose father was Vale's president when it was still in state hands.

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