France Would Support Liberty Steel Industrial Sites: Minister
France Would Support Liberty Steel Industrial Sites: Minister
(Bloomberg) -- France will support employees of industrial sites if they end up being threatened by the difficulties of finance firm Greensill Capital.
“I have no worries” over job losses, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on France 2 Tuesday. “In any case, the state will stand behind these industrial sites and employees.”
Greensill’s collapse has cast a shadow over Sanjeev Gupta’s steel and aluminum empire, GFG Alliance, its biggest customer. Gupta relied heavily on the firm to fund his rapid spree of acquisitions of moribund industrial assets, including in France where Gupta’s Liberty Steel purchased the struggling Ascoval and Hayange plants last year. Le Maire said the state would support employees at all three sites.
U.K.-based Greensill is teetering on the brink of insolvency after Credit Suisse froze billions of investment funds its trade finance firm relies on as buyers of the debt securities it issues. It’s also facing a criminal probe of its German banking unit.
Gupta’s group of companies, known as GFG Alliance, employs 35,000 people across 30 countries. In a court filing on Monday, Greensill said that its largest customer by value has fallen into “severe financial difficulty.”
“If there is a financial difficulty, the state will be able to do the bridge, find alternative solutions,” Le Maire said.
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