Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus will merge with Tata Steel next month once the Indian company's shareholders approve the 13.7-billion-dollar take-over, Tata said Saturday. The deal, India's biggest-ever foreign takeover, comes up for approval by Tata shareholders at a meeting next Wednesday.
Corus Group Plc will be delisted from stock exchanges in April after shareholders give the nod to the acquisition, chairman Ratan Tata told reporters in the eastern Indian city of Jamshedpur.
"Once the shareholders approve the proposal, Corus will be delisted from stock exchanges and would function as a subsidiary of Tata Steel from April," the Press Trust of India quoted him as saying. The take-over will make Tata Steel, the flagship of the Tata empire, the world's fifth-largest steelmaker, vaulting from 56th place after it beat Brazilian rival CSN in a bidding contest for Corus in January.
"An integration committee will be set up to oversee the merger of Tata Steel and Corus," Tata said at a function marking founder Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata's 168th birth anniversary.
Tata said after a meeting with Corus chairman James Leng the committee would comprise representatives from both companies. Leng is likely to be deputy chairman and serve as a director on the Tata Steel board, a company official who wished not to be named told AFP by telephone from Jamshedpur, where Tata's largest steel plant is located.
The combined entity will have annual output of around 25 million tonnes and more than 87,000 employees. Tata said in Jamshedpur there would be no job cuts after the merger. "Making Corus cost-competitive will not mean job cuts," the 68-year-old group chairman said. However, in an interview with British business daily the Financial Times in Mumbai published on Friday, Tata said he could give no such promises because his company had only researched Corus "on paper" and had yet to examine the Anglo-Dutch giant in detail.
"I wouldn't even attempt to do so because it would be wrong of me to give those (job) assurances," he was quoted as saying. Britain's largest steel trade union has demanded a meeting with the Indian tycoon seeking assurances that he will be committed to expanding Corus.
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