Corus accepts Tata offer

Steel producer Corus announced this morning it has accepted a £4.3bn takeover offer from Tata Steel. If shareholders approve the deal, it will create the world’s fifth biggest steel company.

Tata Steel is India’s largest private sector steel company with 2005/06 revenues of $5bn and crude steel production of 5.3m tonnes across India and Southeast Asia. Corus is Europe's’s second largest steel producer with revenues in 2005 of £9.2bn and crude steel production of 18.2 million tonnes, primarily in the UK and the Netherlands.

Jim Leng, chairman of Corus, said: "In the middle of last year, my board agreed a strategic way forward for Corus to seek access to low cost production and high growth markets. (We) held talks with a number of parties from Brazil, Russia and India. This transaction represents the culmination of these talks.”