Tata Steel Crisis: Excalibur Steel UK, A Prospective Buyer, To Meet Banks To Raise Money

Excalibur Steel UK, the management buyout vehicle that wants to purchase the United Kingdom assets of Tata Steel, is set to meet bankers Friday to arrange funds to finance the deal. Excalibur plans to raise about 65 percent of the total funding from the banks, with the remaining money to come from employees and the British government.

Stuart Wilkie, the director of Tata Steel at Port Talbot and Llanwern in the U.K., now leads Excalibur, which he developed after Tata’s board rejected as “too risky” a survival plan he had helped design. Wilkie said the group would meet with one British bank and three international banks Friday to present its buyout plan.

“Ideally, by the end of next week we will have secured necessary lines of finance,” Wilkie told Reuters Thursday.

The buyout group wants 10 percent of the total funding to come from employees of Tata Steel, and expects the British government to cough up 25 percent of the overall cost, something the government has said it would do.

Liberty House, a metals group run by Indian-origin businessman Sanjeev Gupta, is another potential bidder for Tata Steel’s U.K. operations.

A takeover by Excalibur may cost about 1,000 jobs at Tata Steel’s U.K. operations, according to the survival plan which was rejected.

Tata Steel is trying to sell its assets in the U.K. as soon as it can. It sold its giant Scunthorpe plant to Greybull Capital LLP last month, in an attempt to exit the U.K.'s miserable steel industry.