Tatas fail to acquire Vietnamese mills

In what can be seen as a dampener to its global expansion plans, the world’s fifth largest steelmaker Tata Steel has failed to acquire two Vietnamese rolling mills. Instead of selling just two particular units the shareholders of the parent company, Vietnam Industrial Investments (VII), have sought to sell the entire company. “We note that shareholders of VII have opted to pursue the disposal of the whole company instead of taking up the transaction to sell two of their assets (mills) to NatSteel Asia,” a Tata Steel spokesman said.

Tata’s Singapore subsidiary NatSteel was to acquire a 100 per cent stake SSE Steel and 70 per cent in Vinausteel, the two units of VII. The transactions were to be completed by June. However, VII informed the Australian Securities Exchange that the shareholders voted against the sale and purchase agreement at the annual meeting on June 29.

“At the seventh shareholders meeting convened for the purpose of approving the sale of rolling mills to NatSteel Asia, the shareholders of VII voted against the resolution,” a Tata spokesman confirmed.

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“However, Tata Steel would continue to play a major role in Vietnam and has already signed MoU with that government to set up a greenfield steel plant there,” he said.

The deal ran into troubled waters when Prudential Vietnam Securities Investment made an unsolicited bid for VII. It’s offer of $13.3 billion was more than 10 per cent than that of Natsteel.