Corus and Dhamra project hog limelight at TATA Steel AGM
Sunday, 30 Aug 2009
BL reported that TATA Steel’s acquisition of Corus and its joint venture deepwater project at Dhamra hogged the limelight at the company’s annual general meeting, as it did a year ago.
A per report, while one section of the shareholders at the AGM criticized the timing of the Corus acquisition, another section appealed to Mr Ratan Tata to reconsider the company’s Dhamra project if proven harmful to the local turtle habitat.
Several shareholders questioned Mr Tata’s wisdom behind the Corus acquisition and contrasted it with the Natsteel acquisition in 2004 at Singapore which had been profitable from the beginning.
Mr Tata on the Corus acquisition said that “You cannot gauge the life of a corporate in one or two years. I hope we are able to look back over time and say that we took the right decision.”
Initiated in October 2004 as a joint venture with Larsen & Toubro, the Dhamra project is a port that is being developed on a build, own, operate, share and transfer basis. The controversy over the project heated up in August 2008 when Greenpeace activists urged the TATA group to relocate the port due to the environmental threat from the project to the local turtle habitat.
Ms Lalita Ramdas a TATA Steel shareholder and chair of board of directors of Greenpeace International said that "We would like to see the company in partnership with Greenpeace to work towards a solution for the Dhamra project and ensure that the ecosystem is not harmed.”
TATA Steel Europe which primarily includes the assets of Corus, reported a negative EBITDA of INR 1,853 crore in the first quarter of fiscal 2010 depressing the consolidated profits for the company.
