British Steel: Turkish military pension fund ‘planning nearly £1bn investment’
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The Turkish military pension fund which hopes to buy stricken industrial firm British Steel is said to be gearing up to invest nearly £1bn in the company.
Ataer Holding is a front runner out of a handful of potential buyers still being considered by the government’s Official Receiver (OR), which also includes industrial conglomerate Liberty House. Any investment would come on top of a support package from the government, thought to be worth as much as £300m in grants, indemnities and loans.
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Ataer is a subsidiary of Oyak, which manages pensions for Turkey’s military.
The company has drawn up a business plan that would see it pour £900m into the steel maker over several years, according to Sky News.
Such an investment would reassure British Steel’s 5,000 workers of the company’s long-term survival prospects, plus 20,000 more people whose jobs are supported by the firm further along the supply chain.
The OR has run the Scunthorpe-based company over the summer, while the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Beis) tries to find a buyer. British Steel is the second-biggest steel maker in the UK behind Tata Steel.
Beis had whittled its list of potential buyers down to three by late last week. But on Friday afternoon, it emerged another, as-yet unnamed consortium had thrown its had into the ring, led by a UK civil engineering company operating in West Africa.
Read more: British Steel receives late bid from unnamed industrial consortium
Two companies, Liberty House and Ataer, were understood to be clear front runners in the eyes of business secretary Andrea Leadsom. It is unclear whether the emergence of another potential buyer could delay the process of selecting a preferred bidder.
Britain’s embattled steel industry employs 32,000 people directly, while supporting a further 52,300 people’s jobs.
Main image: Getty