Commodities trading firm Liberty House has confirmed it will put a bid forward for Tata Steel’s UK arm as the deadline draws close for other groups to express an interest in the ailing business.
Tata threw the future of UK steelmaking into doubt when it put the business up for sale in March. Unless a buyer is found its operations, which employ 11,000 people and include the giant Port Talbot plant in south Wales, could close within weeks.
The government has said it would be prepared to support any buyer of the plants, some of which are heavily lossmaking, by buying up to a quarter stake in the business and making hundreds of millions of pounds of finance available.
Liberty House, which was one of the first companies to state a potential interest in acquiring the business, said at the weekend that it would make a bid this week. Tata is asking for expressions of interest this week.
While the Indian industrial group has insisted there is no firm timetable for the sale, the FT has reported that it would prefer to wrap up the future of its UK steel business by mid-June.
“We can confirm that Liberty will submit a letter of intent to Tata Steel on Tuesday and has put in place a strong internal transaction team and panel of leading external advisers to take the bid forward,” said a Liberty House spokesman.
The commodities trader, which is headed by Sanjeev Gupta, is being advised by several former Tata Steel executives including Jon Bolton, who until last year was the head of Tata’s Long Products business in Europe. Mr Bolton joined Liberty House last month to run Liberty’s steel businesses in Scotland, which it bought from Tata in a deal involving the Scottish government.
Liberty, which is working with Macquarie, the Australian bank, as an adviser and potential source of funding, will make an offer for the whole of Tata’s UK business, including Port Talbot and a speciality steels business in Yorkshire considered to be of wider interest for potential buyers. A Tata management buyout team is also considering making a bid to the Indian group.
Source: next.ft.com