660 jobs will be safeguarded after one of the country’s biggest steel producers secured a £50m cash injection as part of a wider restructuring at Liberty Steel’s owner Gupta Family Group (GFG) Alliance.
The deal comes as the group’s Australian operations debt restructuring Credit Suisse Asset Management with the funding enabling the steel producer’s Rotherham plant to reopen having been closed since spring.
The business which is headed by Sajeev Gupta, who got the moniker the Saviour of Steel in 2017 when he purchased Liberty’s assets from Tata Steel, was hit by difficulty following the collapse of Greensill Capital, one of the UK’s largest speciality banks and a major lender to Liberty.
After the collapse of Greensill, it was reported that the businessman approached the government for a “last roll of the dice” emergency £170m bailout, which was rejected by ministers, leading to speculation about Liberty’s future. The business also faced further challenges over the last 12 months, including and investigation by Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into GFG relating to “suspected fraud, fraudulent trading and money laundering” as well as legal action from its competitor Tata Steel relating to unpaid debts.