 "Tata Steel's investment on Kalinganagar plant may touch Rs 1 lakh cr")
Tata Steel, the country's largest steel producer, today informed that its European operations' head Karl Koehler has decided to step down from his position of chief executive officer and managing director and move to a German company.
In a BSE filing, the company said though Karl is going to a privately owned industrial firm in Germany as a senior official, he will remain available to Tata Steel in the advisory capacity for a short period.
Koushik Chatterjee, the Tata Steel Group's executive director, meanwhile will take charge of the Europe business in addition to his existing responsibilities, said the filing.
From march 1, Hans Fichser, currently the chief technical officer at tata steel Europe will take over as the chief executive officer and be part of board of tata steel Europe.
He will be guided by Koushik Chatterjee in his new role.
Tata Steel's Europe operations have been in news for a long time now. Challenging business environment has been compelling tata Steel to lay off workers, take non-cash write downs and selling off of units to keep costs under check.
The company had acquired the europe operation erstwhile Corus for a hefty sum in 2007. Today, nearly 60 percent of its consolidated debt of rs 83,000 crore is on Europe operations books while the unit has sent losses to the consolidated ebitda of the company.
