Nationalizing the British steel mills belonging to Sanjeev Gupta’s business empire is the “least likely” option to ensure continued production, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng told MPs.
Mr Gupta’s GFG Alliance has established Liberty Steel factories in Stocksbridge, Brinsworth and West Bromwich up for sale following talks with Credit Suisse, which lost around £ 1 billion when GFG’s main lender, Greensill Capital, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
Liberty Steel employs around 3,000 workers in the UK, jobs at risk due to GFG’s dependence on Greensill, which is now the subject of a Serious Fraud Office Investigation.
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If the sale is successful, Liberty will focus on its Rotherham plant.
Mr Kwarteng said the Liberty factories were ‘good assets’ with a viable future, and their potential sale justified his decision not to accept a request from GFG for a £ 170million bailout.
“The Liberty issue was related to the financial engineering, the opaque part, if you will, of GFG, the leverage, the financing, the debt they had taken on …
“Without it, I think there is a healthy interest in the assets and I think they have a viable future,” the minister told the trade, energy and industrial strategy committee.
“I’m not ruling out anything, but I think nationalization – of all the options – is the least likely.”
In 2019, when British Steel collapsed into administration, the government provided nearly £ 600million to allow factories to be run by the official receiver and to continue production for five months until that time. than a sale to the Chinese company Jingye agreed.
Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said he had ‘ruled nothing out’
Mr. Kwarteng’s comments seem to indicate a …
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Source: news.sky.com
This notice was published: 2021-05-25 12:02:00
