Tata Steel looking at $1 bln bond sale to refinance debt - sources

REUTERS - Tata Steel Ltd is talking to banks about raising $1 billion from an overseas bond sale to refinance a part of its existing debt, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Tuesday.

India's biggest steelmaker, which paid $13 billion for Anglo-Dutch group Corus in 2007, could launch the bond issue by the end of this year, said the sources.

Tata Steel, a unit of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, is expected to pick banks to manage the bond sale in the next couple of weeks, one of the sources said.

"This speculation is incorrect at this point," said a spokesman for Tata Steel, which had net debt of 613 billion rupees at the end of June.

Shares in Tata Steel, which has a market value of roughly $5 billion, ended 1.2 percent lower at 296.80 rupees, while the main Mumbai market index rose 0.4 percent. The stock has lost a third of its value this year.

(Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Archana Narayanan in Mumbai; Editing by Greg Mahlich)