Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta and his Liberty Steel which is Europe’s fourth-largest steelmaker has reportedly submitted an updated offer for German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp’s steel division.
This appears three months after Liberty Steel, said it had made a non-binding indicative bid for the unit, which Thyssenkrupp has put on the block as part of a bigger group restructuring.
In a public statement, the company stated, “This is an important step for Liberty demonstrating our binding commitment to the combination of the two businesses.
“Due diligence and our discussions with Thyssenkrupp have so far confirmed that a potential combination of Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe and Liberty Steel is the right answer from an economic, social, and environmental perspective.”
Thyssenkrupp is reportedly also considering a spin-off of its steel division and is now carefully examining Liberty Steel’s “firmed up bid”.
A successful bid by Gupta is estimated to generate £200-300 million lower than in a potential tie-up for the Thyssenkrupp business with Tata Steel’s European unit but higher than in a deal with Sweden’s SSAB. This will partly be achieved by better utilising Thyssenkrupp’s steel production sites while cutting Liberty Steel’s dependence on roughly 3 million tonnes of hot rolled coil it needs to buy each year.
