Anil Agarwal’s company Vedanta Limited is set to sell its steel business
If sources are to be believed, Vedanta Limited has approached ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel, Tata Steel, JSW and Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. Along with this, a group of financial investors has also been approached. Top officials of several companies have also made site visits along with the officials of Vedanta Group. These include Aditya Mittal, CEO of ArcelorMittal. Vedanta Group said about this that it does not want to comment on market speculation. ArcelorMittal and JSW also declined to comment. Tata Steel CFO Kaushik Chatterjee said the company does not have any such proposal as of now.
The company was bought four years ago
Vedanta had in 2018 overtaken Tata Steel to buy Electrosteel for Rs 5,320 crore. Creditors had dragged Electrosteel into the insolvency process. After the purchase, Vedanta delisted Electrosteel Steels. Vedanta Group holds 95.5% stake in Electrosteel. The parent company of Vedanta Limited is Vedanta Resources, headquartered in London. Agarwal’s family investment company Volcan holds 100 per cent stake in Vedanta Resources. Electrosteel has an annual capacity of 1.5 million metric tonnes. It has facilities in Bokaro and Goa.
On October 31, Moody’s Investor Service downgraded Vedanta’s corporate family rating. The outlook for the company’s ratings remains negative. After this, on November 3, Vedanta removed Moody’s as the rating agency. The prices of commodities were affected worldwide during the Corona period. However, some analysts say that the bad phase of the group has passed. JP Morgan analyst Pinakin Parekh said Vedanta paid a dividend of Rs 51 per share in the first half of 2022-23. The company’s debt has decreased by $1.4 billion. Metal prices are rising after the pandemic and the company is in a position to pay off its debt.
