Essar Steel To Raise Borrowing Limit To Rs 8000 Crore

Essar Steel is increasing its overall borrowing limit to Rs 8,000 crore from the existing limit of Rs 5,000 crore. This is being done to meet the expanded activities of the company.

The company is also planning to increase its lending limit to Rs 2,500 crore from the current limit of Rs 100 crore.

The Rs 2,500 crore will be exclusive of the guarantees of Rs 530.19 crore already given on behalf of the erstwhile Essar Steel subsidiary Essar Power.

Essar Steel is also raising the ceiling of the NRI\OCB\FII holding in the company to 30 per cent of the total paid up equity capital of the company.

This follows the recent RBI move to increase the FII\OCB\NRI holding limit to 30 per cent from the earlier 24 per cent.

Essar Steel will be seeking shareholders approval for the above resolutions at its annual general meeting on September 18.

Essar Steel will also seek shareholders approval to ratify the appointment of Jatinder Mehra as the managing director of the company and S N Puri as a whole time director on the company board.

It may be mentioned that there has been a major reshuffle of the board of the steel company recently, with Ravi Ruia vice chairman and managing director of the company relinquishing his office of managing director with effect from June 25. Ruia however still continues as the director and vice chairman of the company.

S V Venkatesan whose term as the whole time director finance expires on November 30

is also stepping down as a whole time director of the company but will continue as a non executive director of the company.

A S Sane too has resigned from the company board due to his increasing involvement in the new projects of the group.

The company has achieved a capacity utilisation rate of over 85 per cent towards the end of 1996.

The company has reported a turnover of Rs 1802.80 crore as compared to Rs 582.37 crore for the previous year an increase of 210 per cent.

The company is planning to maximise capacity utilisation of all its three plants that is the pelletisation plant the HBI plant and the HRC plant to achieve significant economies of scale during the current year.