Tata Steel could finally agree a sale of its speciality and pipes business this week, in the process saving around 2,000 jobs across sites in Rotherham, Stocksbridge and Hartlepool.
The business was placed up for sale earlier in the summer, having been separated from a plan to sell all of Indian-owned Tata's UK steel assets.
Having initially been adamant that any rescue buyout would have to be for the whole UK operation, the firm later backtracked by splitting its speciality unit from its main business.
Tata subsequently abandoned the sale of its remaining assets, instead including them in ongoing talks with the German conglomerate ThyssenKrupp over a merger of the companies' pan-European businesses.
That process is ongoing and remains dependent on talks with the government over Tata's £15bn British Steel pension scheme. The scheme has a huge funding shortfall that the company is keen to offload.
Tata's executive director Koushik Chatterjee told The Guardian: "We need more time – there is the complication of pensions. All bidders come with a univocal approach – that pensions have to be separated from the business."
As for the speciality unit, the Daily Telegraph says the "frontrunner" to acquire it is global commodities group Liberty House, which had been interested in making a bid for the whole UK operation.
Liberty House is expected to pay a "realistic" price of less than £100m, according to sources.
A sale earlier this year of the long products unit, which employs 4,000 staff and is based at a plant in Scunthorpe, was revealed by Tata yesterday to have swung the whole group to a net loss for the third quarter.
Greybull Capital paid a nominal £1 for the business, crystallising a £370m write-down and triggering a £350m loss for the three months.
On a cheerier note, the remaining UK assets, including the massive plants at Port Talbot in Wales, turned previous losses into a £90m gain for the quarter, with the weak pound helping to boost exports.
Chatterjee added: "Today we see a more depreciated pound, which is where exporting competitiveness has improved. That provides a lever [for the UK business] to sustain itself ... but that’s very fickle."
Source:The Week