India’s largest steel company Tata Steel Ltd has offloaded its entire equity stake in Lanka Special Steels Ltd (LSSL) to Sri Lanka-based E B Creasy & Company Plc for LKR 433 million (over Rs 20.4 crore or $3.3 million), as per a stock market disclosure.
Incorporated in Sri Lanka in 2003 out of Tata Steel’s first overseas acquisition, LSSL manufactures and supplies hot dip galvanised wire and nail wire with an installed capacity of 14,400 metric tonnes per annum.
In the financial year 2014, the company had an annual turnover of LKR 1,569 million (about Rs 74 crore), it said in the disclosure.
On the other side, E B Creasy & Company engages in logistic business, consumer goods manufacturing, automotive business, ‘home and industrial’ business, and renewable energy business in Sri Lanka.
In February this year, Tata Steel agreed to acquire three strip products service centres of steel producer SSAB in Nordic. SSAB was required to sell these units as a condition of its takeover of another company Rautaruukki Corp.
Tata Steel, one of the flagship companies of the Tata group, is the first integrated steel plant in Asia, the world’s second most geographically diversified steel producer and a Fortune 500 Company.
As on December 2014, promoters held 31.35 per cent stake holding in Tata Steel, while institutions and non-institutions owned 42.79 per cent and 24.14 per cent, respectively.
On Wednesday, shares of Tata Steel were trading at Rs 318.80, up 0.62 per cent at 12:00 PM on the BSE in flat Mumbai market.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)