Tata Steel UK finally gets a new home

Finally, the loss making assets of Tata Steel UK have a owner. The 2-month long decision finally comes to an end with Tata Steel selling its 4.5-million-tonne of Long Products division to Greybull Capital. More than 7 companies were in the fray to acquire company’s UK asset, but of them all Greybull Capital struck the right chord with the Tata’s.

The company has sold 4.5-million-tonne of Long Products division to Greybull. The completion of this transaction marks the start of the formal sale process of Tata Steel Ltd.’s UK assets, which it acquired in 2007 through the $12.9 billion purchase of Corus Group.

Tata Group had acquired the assets in 2007 through the purchase of Corus Group. Corus Group was formed through the merger of Koninklijke Hoogovens and British Steel in 1999 and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It was acquired by Tata of India in 2007, and renamed Tata Steel Europe in September 2010.

Nearly 15000 jobs were on stake, as the company in March announced that it plans to partially or fully restructure its UK assets. The deal with Greybull however will save about a third of those jobs, i.e. 4,400 in the UK in addition to 400 in France.

Tata Steel Europe Ltd. (formerly Corus Group PLC) is a steelmaking company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with its main operations in the United Kingdom and Netherlands.

The shares of its parent company Tata Steel on the Indian bourses on Wednesday are trading at Rs 333.30, marginally down by 0.34 per cent.