If it’s a chilly wintry day in London, Ratan Tata must be in town buying classic-but-hoary old UK brands. In 2007, the Indian industrialist made headlines after overpaying (as Tata himself admitted) to snap up Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus for $12.9 billion. At the time, a banker involved with the deal remembered with a grimace the awful steel assets up for sale on the British side of Corus, noting that they were the worst he’d seen in a developed country in "a long, long time". Never mind: Mumbai-listed Tata Steel, the division that completed the Corus acquisition on January 31 2007 with the aid of a $2.66 billion bridge loan and $6.14 billion-worth of debt, saw its stock more than double in value in 2007 – although it has fallen back by a third this year, in line with the rest of the market.
