The British government has promised to help the company find a serious buyer to help save the thousands of jobs at its UK plants.
Seeking to find a buyer for Tata Steel's UK operations and save thousands of jobs there, British Business Minister Sajid Javid met Tata Group chief Cyrus Mistry on Wednesday to discuss the contours of the sale process.
Javid, who air-dashed to Mumbai on Wednesday morning, had a marathon two-hour long meeting with Mistry and other top officials at Bombay House, the iconic headquarter of the Tata Group which has put its steel operations in the UK on the block after grappling with huge losses and severe cash burn.
The Tatas will launch the sale process by Monday with the British government promising to help find a serious buyer in its bid to secure jobs of thousands of workers at the plants in the UK.
Neither the Minister nor Tata Group officials spoke to the large posse of reporters including from the British media, who were waiting since morning outside the meeting venue.
A Tata Steel spokesman said he has nothing to share with the media.
Javid, who also met Tata Steel's Group Executive Director Koushik Chatterjee, is understood to have discussed broader contours of the sale process and is said to have pressed upon Tatas to ensure that there were no job losses.
Tata Steel UK employs around 15,000 people and the British Government is keen to save these jobs in an already bad economic environment, especially for the steel industry which once was among the most prominent ones in the country.
The meeting comes within a week of the Tatas putting up for sale the British operations of Tata Steel, which it had acquired as Corus Steel in April 2007 at the peak of commodity price hike cycle for over $12 billion but has since then never been able to turn around.
Tata Steel Europe had announced plans to sell its UK steel business last week after a "strategic review" by its board, throwing the industry into chaos. The company, since the acquisition, has sunk over 3 billion pounds into the UK plants that have been hit by Chinese dumping and a massive 30 per cent drop in demand since the 2008 global credit crisis.
The British Government, in a statement yesterday, had said Javid would be meeting Tatas in Mumbai after "constructive meetings in London with trade unions, the EEF (national manufacturers' organisation) and UK Steel this week."
The labour unions have asked Javid to ensure that Tatas make all out efforts to find a buyer for its plants.
Before he left for the hurriedly planned India trip, Javid had crucial talks with Indian-origin businessman Sanjeev Gupta of Liberty Group, who has expressed an interest in acquiring Tata Steel's embattled Port Talbot plant in South Wales. The plant alone employs over 4,000 and is the biggest steel unit in the British isles.
Gupta reportedly said he was waiting for the Tatas to start the "sales process" and promised there will not be any major job cuts. Gupta's firm is conducting due diligence of the Tata Steel operations and has held talks with the Tata Group over the prospect of acquiring the unit and saving thousands of jobs.
"If we get involved in Port Talbot, we will only do so on the basis that we are confident there will not be any mass redundancies," Gupta said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has got personally involved in trying to work out a solution to the crisis triggered as a result of cheap imports from China, falling global demand, high energy prices and a tougher tax regime than many rival nations. But his government is not ready to impose higher tariffs on Chinese steel.
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