India's
Economic Times reported over the weekend that Essar Steel, a unit of New Delhi-based Essar Global Ltd., and Russia's OAO Severstal are in a race to buy Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corp. from Esmark Inc., which only completed its takeover of the West Virginia steelmaker in November.
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The two steel giants have been pitted against each other before, and Severstal recently beat out Essar as they both tried to buy Baltimore-based Sparrows Point from ArcelorMittal.
The Economic Times placed the value of Wheeling Pitt at $1.5 billion. The value of the company has been at issue recently, as Esmark prepared federally required financial reports on year-end and first-quarter data.
Company officials have said there were several issues delaying the financial reports, including how to set values for some of the company's assets, as well as accounting complexities relating to the completion of the Esmark takeover in the fourth quarter.
Wheeling Pittsburgh manufactures a variety of steel products ranging from hot rolled coils, cold rolled coils, galvanized sheets to prepainted and tin mill sheets. The company's annual capacity is estimated to be 2.5 million tonnes of flat steel.
Last year, Essar Steel acquired Canada-based Algoma Steel for $1.6 billion, which had a capacity of 4 million tons of steel per annum. - Donna Block
See story from Economic Times
See related story about Sparrows Point from TheDeal.com
See related story about Algoma from TheDeal.com
