ArcelorMittal set to gain EU approval for Ilva buy: sources

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker, is on track to win EU antitrust clearance to acquire Italian peer Ilva after agreeing to sell assets across Europe, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

ArcelorMittal has offered to sell its only galvanised steel plant in Italy and units in Romania, the former Yugoslavia Republic of Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and in Belgium.

Sources say that is a far bigger package of sales than the company was originally planning, underlining the European Commission's worries about the bid to buy Europe's biggest capacity steel plant.

The EU competition enforcer has been concerned that the deal may reduce competition in some flat carbon steel products and result in higher prices for customers in southern Europe.

The Commission, which is scheduled to decide on the deal by May 23, declined to comment. ArcelorMittal was not immediately available to comment.

Steel service centre S.Polo Lamiere said it had provided feedback on ArcelorMittal's concessions to the Commission.

"The global feedback was that those remedies were considered sufficient by the different operators in the market, so the feedback the Commission received from stakeholders was positive," its CEO Tomasso Sandrini told Reuters.

The size of the divestments has prompted worries in some countries where the businesses to be sold are located.

Luxembourg Economy Minister Etienne Schneider on Monday wrote to European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, saying it was regrettable that regulators had demanded hefty asset sales from ArcelorMittal and that Europe needs a strong industrial base.

Vestager said she would make sure that buyers of those assets have the expertise and financial resources to continue operating them.

Ilva, based in the city of Taranto in southern Italy, has been dogged by charges of corruption and environmental crimes for years - charges that it denies.

It was also the beneficiary of two loans worth about 84 million euros ($103.17 million), which it will have to repay the Italian state after the Commission ruled that these constituted illegal state aid.

($1 = 0.8142 euros)

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Additional reporting by Maytaal Angel in London and Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Andrew Heavens)