AIP takes control of Gupta’s aluminium mill

Gupta’s metals group GFG Alliance, which is the subject of criminal investigations into alleged fraud and money laundering in the UK and France, has been battling to refinance more than $5billion of debt after the collapse of its main lender Greensill Capital last year. GFG has denied wrongdoing.
 
AIP, a US buyout firm that specialises in taking over industrial businesses, announced that it had taken control of an aluminium rolling mill in Duffel, Belgium, from Gupta. The metals facility is the second that the US group has seized from GFG in the past year, after it successfully took over Europe’s largest aluminium smelter in Dunkirk, France in October.
 
In both instances, AIP bought up debt from the original lenders then called a default. In the case of Duffel, the US buyout group acquired a €96mn loan from Asian investment firm Tor Investment, which sat at a UK holding company that owned the aluminium mill.
 
The loss of the Belgian mill is a blow to Gupta, whose Alvance aluminium business has now lost control of all of its operations in continental Europe, leaving it with just one smelter in the Scottish Highlands. It comes days after Gupta failed to have a legal attempt to wind up three of his UK steel businesses thrown out on the grounds that their problems were caused by the pandemic. The judge in that case also noted that the metals magnate’s efforts to raise fresh financing had foundered.