Negotiations for British Steel ongoing: OYAK

A company source at Turkey’s OYAK Holding, the biggest complementary pension fund in Turkey, which signed an exclusivity agreement in mid-August to buy British Steel, told S&P Global Platts Thursday that the open-ended negotiations for the takeover are ongoing.

This statement to Platts came following some news in the Turkish media Thursday that OYAK could finalize the deal at the beginning of November, citing a statement by UK’s Labour MP for Redcar, Anna Turley.

In the statement, published via a UK-based TeessideLive news report seen by Platts, the MP said: “A large team from the company has been in the UK looking in detail at the operational, regulatory and financial situation at British Steel as part of the due diligence process…Officials are working on pace and there are no delays to the original timeframe of 6 to 8 weeks.”

According to an OYAK statement previously sent to Platts, after the successful completion of a detailed inspection process at the end of October, the handover was expected to be held by year-end. Turkish military pension fund OYAK is Ataer Holding’s parent company, which is the largest shareholder in Erdemir, the nation’s biggest steel producer.

While exclusive talks continued between the Official Receiver and preferred bidder OYAK over the sale of the UK-based steelmaker, Chinese steelmaker Jingye Group approached the UK government with a fresh offer for British Steel at the beginning of October, as Platts has reported.

British Steel, which went into compulsory liquidation on May 22, has about 3 million mt/year of production capacity in the UK, France and the Netherlands.

— Cenk Can