Tata Steel Europe

Corus redirects here, for other uses see Corus (disambiguation)

Tata Steel Europe

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Steel
Founded	Koninklijke Hoogovens N.V. in 1918 British Steel Corporation in 1967 Corus in 1999
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Key people	Prof. Dr. Karl-Ulrich Kohler, MD & CEO Uday Chaturvedi, CTO Tor Farquhar, Executive Director Human Resources Frank Royle, Director Finance
Products	Steel
Revenue	GB£10,142 million (2005)
Operating income	GB£680 million (2005)
Net income	GB£451 million (2005)
Employees	50,000
Parent	Tata Steel, member of Tata Group
Website	http://tatasteeleurope.com

Tata Steel Europe (formerly Corus Group) is a multinational steel-making company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.^[1][2] It is the second-largest steel-maker in Europe and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel of India, one of the ten largest steel producers in the world.^[1]

Corus Group was formed through the merger of Koninklijke Hoogovens and British Steel on 6 October 1999. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but was acquired by Tata in 2007. On 27 September 2010 Corus announced it was changing its name to Tata Steel Europe and adopting the Tata corporate identity.

History

Background - Corus

See also: British Steel and Koninklijke Hoogovens

British Steel Corporation was a large British steel producer, consisting of the assets of former private companies which had been nationalised on 28 July 1967 by the Labour Party government of Harold Wilson. On 5 December 1998 the company was privatised as a result of the British Steel Act 1988. Koninklijke Hoogovens was a Dutch steel producer founded in 1918, located in IJmuiden.

On 6 October 1999 British Steel merged with Koninklijke Hoogovens to form 'Corus Group' forming the third largest producer of steel behind POSCO of South Korea and Nippon Steel of Japan. British Steel formed about two-thirds of the merged group.

On 16 March 2006, Corus announced that it had signed a letter of intent to sell its aluminium rolled products and extrusions businesses to Aleris International, Inc. for £570m. Corus retained its smelting operations and supply Aleris under a long-term agreement. On 1 August, the sale to Aleris Europe was completed.^[3]

Takeover by Tata Steel

Main article: Tata Corus acquisition

On 30 January 2007, Tata Steel, part of India's Tata Group, purchased a 100% stake in the Corus Group at 608 pence per share in an all cash deal, cumulatively valued at (USD 12.04 Billion).^[4]

Tata surprised the credit default swap segment of the derivative markets by deciding to raise $6.17bn of debt for the deal through a new subsidiary of Corus called 'Tata Steel UK', rather than by raising the debt itself. Tata's security credit rating is investment grade, whereas the new subsidiary may not be. The higher risk associated with raising debt through a subsidiary with a lower credit rating prompted Fitch Ratings to downgrade its rating of the credit swap risks in the takeover to 'negative'. Fitch also stated that Corus' responsibility for the debt may lead to Corus' own unsecured debt rating being downgraded. This does not affect the rating of bonds issued by Corus which are secured debt.^[5]

On 19 November 2006, the Brazillian steel company CSN launched a counter offer for Corus at 475 pence per share, valuing it at $8.4 Billion.

On 10 December 2006, Tata preemptively upped the offer to 500 pence (the “Revised Tata Acquisition”). Other than the increased offer price, the Revised Tata Acquisition was subject to the same terms and conditions as set out in the original offer.

On 11 December 2006, CSN announced a formal offer for the Company at an offer price of 515 pence per Corus Share (the “CSN Acquisition”), valuing the deal at $ 9.6 Billion.. The CSN Acquisition would also be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement and is subject to a pre-condition that either Corus Shareholders reject the Tata Scheme or the Tata Scheme is otherwise withdrawn by Corus or lapses. The Corus board promptly recommended both the revised offers to its shareholders.

On 19 December 2006, Corus announced the following:

In the light of the competing offers for Corus by Tata Steel UK Limited (“Tata”) and CSN Acquisitions Limited (“CSN”), the Company announced on 12 December 2006 that the Corus Directors intended to propose resolutions to shareholders at each of the reconvened EGM and Court Meeting to be held on 20 December 2006 to adjourn those meetings. The Company also stated that it would announce a proposed date for those adjourned meetings in due course.

Also on 19 December 2006, UK Watchdog the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers announced that the last date for each of Tata and CSN to announce revised offers for the Company, should they wish to do so, is 30 January 2007. They also warned that it would begin an auction procedure if the two remained in competition.^[6]

On 31 January 2007, following the lack of agreement on an offer, the previously mentioned auction process was triggered. Following the conclusion of the auction process (at an unprecedented length of nine rounds) conducted by the Panel in accordance with Rule 32.5 of the Code (the "Auction"), Tata Steel announced the proposed acquisition of Corus Group at 608p per share, that being 5p more than CSN's top offer of 603p. The £6.7 billion deal includes £500 million of debt.

The Corus Group board recommended the acquisition to their shareholders later the same day.

Tata Steel Europe

On 27 September 2010 Corus announced that it was changing its name to Tata Steel Europe and adopting the Tata logo. The style change started with immediate effect on transactional documents but the complete branding change would take place over an unspecified period.

Operations

Since 2008, Corus and subsequently Tata Steel Europe has been structured into three divisions. These are:

• Strip Products Division
• Long Products Division - construction, industrial, engineering, rail and tubular products
• Distribution and Building Systems Division - steel products for the building industry, and distribution for other products

Following the sale of Teesside Steelworks to SSI in February 2011, Tata now operate three major integrated steel plants:

• Port Talbot, South Wales
• Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire
• IJmuiden in the Netherlands

It also has secondary rolling mills and steel product manufacturing sites situated at:

• Shotton, North Wales (which manufactures Colorcoat products)
• Trostre, Llanelli (manufactures Tinplate)
• Llanwern, Newport
• Rotherham (Aldwarke) (manufactures Engineering Steel^[7])
• Rotherham (Brinsworth Strip Mills)
• Stocksbridge, South Yorkshire
• Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, Scotland (Dalzell Works) (manufactures Steel Plate)
• Cambuslang, South Lanarkshire, Scotland (Clydebridge Works)
• Hayange, France (Rail Mill)
• Bergen, Norway

In addition it has tube mills located at Corby, Stockton and Hartlepool in England and Oosterhout, Arnhem, Zwijndrecht and Maastricht in the Netherlands. It has service centres predominantly in Northern Europe and sales offices in around 70 countries around the world. It has a color coating line in Sakarya, Turkey.

Tata is the sponsor of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in the Netherlands and the UK triathlon team.

On 26 January 2009, Corus announced job cuts of 3500 worldwide and 2500 in the UK due the economic downturn and the reduction of steel demand. It was announced that Corus's Rotherham plant would suffer the worst cutting over 600 jobs. On the same day it was announced that Corus would be closing down its defined benefit pension scheme to new members.

Products

Construction

Corus' steel products for construction include:

• "Advance" sections - standard structural sections such as universal beams, universal columns, piles and angle sections
• "Celsius" sections - hot-finished hollow sections
• "Hybox" sections - cold-formed hollow sections
• Slimdek - composite metal decking

Corus publish a reference guide known as the "Blue Book", which contains details of construction steel sections, and design information to use with Eurocode 3 and BS 5950.

Electrical steels

Tata Steel Europe produce electrical steels via their subsidiary Cogent Power.^[8]

Tata Steel Europe also intends to produce steel roofs that generate power, using Dyesol technology.

See also

• List of steel producers

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Tata Steel in Europe". Tata Steel. http://www.tatasteeleurope.com/en/company/european_operations/. Retrieved 29 November 2010. 
2. ^ "Addresses". Tata Steel. http://www.tatasteeleurope.com/en/contact/addresses/. Retrieved 29 November 2010. 
3. ^ Corus of approval for Aluminium sale
4. ^ "India's Tata wins race for Corus". BBC. 31 January 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6315823.stm. Retrieved 2007-11-26. 
5. ^ Ryan, Jennifer (25 October 2006). "Tata Debt for Corus Leaves Derivative Trades in Lurch". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=anH6oe4Dyf.I&refer=home. Retrieved 2006-10-25. 
6. ^ "Watchdog sets Corus bid deadline". BBC News. 19 December 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6193913.stm. Retrieved 30 April 2010. 
7. ^ European producers of Engineering Steel
8. ^ Electrical Steels

External links

• Official website