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Sanjeev Gupta, the Indian businessman who buys Sidex Galati
The British group Liberty part of the World Alliance GFG belonging to the business man Sanjeev Gupta announced on Friday 12 October an agreement for the purchase of four siderurginal units in Europe: the Czech Republic, Skopie, Italy and Sidex Galati.
Sanjeev Kumar Gupta, a businessman of Indian origin, is the founder and CEO of the company Liberty House, which had in 2017 a turnover of almost 15 billion Dollars. He also leads GFG (Grupta Family Group), with over 14,000 employees worldwide.
The Liberty House company, which is interested in Sidex, was founded in 1992 by Sanjeev Gupta, according to the website Liberty House, and has offices in London, Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong. In 2017 the company acquired the steelmaking company Tata Steel Europe in many areas of the UK. Also in 2017, Liberty House bought Arrium, an Australian metallurgical company.
The Gupta brothers businesses in Romania started in 1999, when they founded the company in charge of intermediary goods, Trans Commodities Danube.
Transdanube Industries, a company owned by offshore outsourcing Cobrom Investments Limited registered in Cyprus by the Indian family Gupta (brothers Raj, Sanjeev and Alok), announced in 2010 that it would begin the construction of a steel mill with a production capacity of 500,000 tons annually 2011 in Oltenita, total investment amounting to 150 million. Euro, but that never happened.
The Liberty House, British company owned by Indian Sanjeev Gupta, had announced some time ago its intention to acquire the plant in Galati, according to market sources quoted by the Financial Times.
The plant in Galati is strategic not only for Romania, but for the whole European Union, the largest steel producer on the border with the former Soviet space. In a situation of force majeure military steel production is strategic, so most analysts and officials who are interested in this subject say that the manufacturer Steel Galati should be taken over by a European company.
The stake is not only the production of steel Sidex of 2 million tonnes or the 5,600 employees but an entire vertical and horizontal ecosystem of steel production, with hundreds of thousands of employees and tens of billion turnover for all companies integrated in the system.
Sidex previously belonged to ArcelorMittal, the world's leading steel and mining, with a presence in 60 countries and industrial footprint in 19 countries, which recorded in 2017 a turnover of 68.7 billion. dollars and steel production of 93.1 million tons.
The Indian Lakshmi Mittal, interested in buying the plant Ilva in Italy, the largest in Europe, was forced to sell other capabilities he holds in the European Union, including Sidex of Galati to meet competition concerns in the European Commission. ,.
ArcelorMittal Galati, the largest steel mill in the country, exceeded last year's turnover threshold of RON 4.6 billion (one billion euros), compared to a level of 3.4 billion lei reported in the previous year, according to the data of the Ministry of Finance. Although it managed to increase its turnover by 38%, Galati plant was still at a loss last year but much lower than in 2016. The company had losses of 153 million lei last year against 271 million lei in the previous year, shows the same source.