$12.1 billion & Corus is Tata’s

Tata Steel’s bid of 608 pence a share in cash topped the best offer from CSN after a nine-round auction that saw bids for Corus rise almost a fifth from the starting price.

The deal is expected to fuel a new wave of consolidation in the fragmented steel sector after Mittal Steel bought Arcelor for $32 billion last year to create the world`s biggest steel producer.

‘‘It is a moment of fulfilment for India... this will prove to be a visionary move,’’ Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata told reporters in Mumbai after announcing victory.

‘‘I have not slept a wink. The entire night I was here (at the Taj hotel in Mumbai) to oversee the auction,’’ he told The Indian Express.

From a room in the hotel, Ratan Tata and Tata Sons Director N Soonawala, Tata Steel Managing Director B Muthuraman and Tata Steel Vice-President (Finance) Kaushik Chatterjee used a video link to coordinate the bids with Tata Sons Director Arun Gandhi in London.

J J Irani, former Managing Director of Tata Steel who was present at the news conference today, said: ‘‘When I heard on a TV programme from London that the maximum bid can go as high as 610 pence for Corus, I knew we had won. I switched off the TV and went to sleep.’’ The The Tata threshold was much higher than the 608 pence per share which the company finally paid.

Tata dismissed suggestions that the group had overbid for the acquisition of Corus and said the company’s share prices, which fell by Rs 55 at 464.90, was a result of investors ‘‘taking both a short-term and a harsh view’’.

‘‘We often damn a company when it makes loss in a year... hopefully in future it (market) will look back and say it (acquisition) was a right move... Investors came in and increased the price. But we had to pay to get the company. We had taken a view that we would not go beyond a point. Had we reached that point, we would have walked away,’’ he said.

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