Thursday, October 19, 2006

Tata takeover not necessarily bad news for Port Talbot



It has just been reported that the board of Corus has accepted a takeover bid from Tata of India.

Tata Industries is a long-established conglomerate, founded in 1868 by a member of a Parsee family. It became rich on the basis of textile manufacture, but has since branched out into many industrial areas, from steel to motors and IT.

Indians are the third largest external investors (after Japanese and Americans) in UK business, and have a rather better record of maintaining facilities - especially research - here than some other nationals. If control of Corus has to leave Europe, India is probably a safer destination from the point of view of Welsh job security than Russia or even the United States.

1 comment:

Aberavon and Neath Liberal Democrats said...

So, after three months of bid and counter-bid, and a ten-hour auction described by one commentator as peculiar for a company of this size, Corus is definitely to be taken over by Tata.

The worry is that the increased cost to Tata of the takeover means the Indian conglomerate will remove even more capacity from Port Talbot to compensate.

- Frank Little