Jindal Steel & Power is considering a break-up plan as part of a restructuring to help trim its 420 billion rupee (Dh22.03bn) debt pile and boost investor confidence in a company that was once India’s biggest steelmaker by market value.
The New Delhi-based company is looking at splitting its steel, power and international businesses into three separate entities, chairman Naveen Jindal said in an interview. Any such plan would need the approval of lenders, regulators and the board, he said.
The steel unit would include the coal mines, while the international business would include the Oman steel plant, he said.
Jindal Steel will seek to progressively sell about 30 per cent of the Oman unit over two to three years, and this may partly be achieved through an initial public offer, the chairman said. The company will engage with potential buyers in December and hopes to conclude a deal by March, he added.
The outlook is brightening for the mill, which last month reported its first quarterly profit after notching up three-and-a-half years of losses. In the wake of a global steel industry revival, its shares have risen 55 per cent in the past year, making it the best performer on the 10-member S&P BSE Metal Index.
“It is a kind of value unlocking,” said Goutam Chakraborty, a Mumbai-based analyst at Emkay Global Financial Services, by phone. “Breaking the company into three and distributing the debt accordingly is probably going to take the load away from the single company.”
While the company’s steel business is performing well with a rail order from the government and a buoyant market, its power business was hit by the cancellation of coal licences by the government, Mr Chakraborty said.
The steelmaker, which has come back from the brink of bankruptcy, wants to get its debt ratio down to two times pre-tax earnings, from about five times now, over the next four or five years, Mr Jindal said. This fiscal year the company wants to cut debt by 15 per cent. “We are going to be really, really conservative. There is no question of taking more debt,” he said.
Jindal Steel’s coal mining operations in Australia may also be on the block - but there’s no hurry. “Coal prices are very good, so if we get a good price, we can look at that,” he said.
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JSW Energy, run by his brother Sajjan Jindal, had paid an advance of about 4bn rupees for a deal brokered in 2016 for Jindal Steel’s 1,000-megawatt power plant in central India. However, the period for completion of the deal has been extended by a year as some of the conditions for the sale remain unfulfilled.
“If we do not do the deal then we will pay it back to them," Mr Jindal said. Both are sons of billionaire Savitri Devi Jindal.
In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012, Mr Jindal’s company had a market value ahead of rival producers Tata Steel and JSW Steel - owned by Mr Jindal’s brother - and Steel Authority of India.
Jindal’s group was among those that benefited when the government began awarding 218 coal mines to companies starting from 1993 on condition they invest in industrial projects and pay royalties. But in 2014, the Supreme Court canceled most of these permits, terming the allocations arbitrary and illegal, and ordered the producers to pay for the coal they had already extracted.
“We got into this situation because we had to borrow almost a billion dollars to pay the additional levy and then to complete the plant,” said Jindal. “When you have such things happening, you have no option but to carry on and find ways to survive without it and we have done that successfully.”
Risks still remain for the company. In addition to weak power demand and a struggle to get coal supplies, India’s Enforcement Directorate has filed a complaint against Jindal for alleged money laundering.
The cases are “completely frivolous and malicious,” said Mr Jindal. “These are very unfortunate, but we have full faith in India’s judiciary and we know we are going to come out clean and strong from these cases and they do not deter us at all.”
From Zero
Artist: Linkin Park
Label: Warner Records
Number of tracks: 11
Rating: 4/5
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
The%20specs
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Iraq negotiating over Iran sanctions impact
- US sanctions on Iran’s energy industry and exports took effect on Monday, November 5.
- Washington issued formal waivers to eight buyers of Iranian oil, allowing them to continue limited imports. Iraq did not receive a waiver.
- Iraq’s government is cooperating with the US to contain Iranian influence in the country, and increased Iraqi oil production is helping to make up for Iranian crude that sanctions are blocking from markets, US officials say.
- Iraq, the second-biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, pumped last month at a record 4.78 million barrels a day, former Oil Minister Jabbar Al-Luaibi said on Oct. 20. Iraq exported 3.83 million barrels a day last month, according to tanker tracking and data from port agents.
- Iraq has been working to restore production at its northern Kirkuk oil field. Kirkuk could add 200,000 barrels a day of oil to Iraq’s total output, Hook said.
- The country stopped trucking Kirkuk oil to Iran about three weeks ago, in line with U.S. sanctions, according to four people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because they aren’t allowed to speak to media.
- Oil exports from Iran, OPEC’s third-largest supplier, have slumped since President Donald Trump announced in May that he’d reimpose sanctions. Iran shipped about 1.76 million barrels a day in October out of 3.42 million in total production, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
- Benchmark Brent crude fell 47 cents to $72.70 a barrel in London trading at 7:26 a.m. local time. U.S. West Texas Intermediate was 25 cents lower at $62.85 a barrel in New York. WTI held near the lowest level in seven months as concerns of a tightening market eased after the U.S. granted its waivers to buyers of Iranian crude.
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Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions
There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.
1 Going Dark
A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.
2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers
A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.
3. Fake Destinations
Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.
4. Rebranded Barrels
Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.
* Bloomberg
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950