Sanjeev Gupta, the managing director of Liberty Steel, said he is “not married to” a bid for Tata’s UK steel business and said he would walk away if the British government fails to meet his terms.
The 44-year-old was born in Punjab, India, where his father was an industrialist who owned Victor cycles among other businesses. He moved to the UK in his early teens, attending boarding school at St Edmunds College in Kent. Later he graduated from Cambridge University.
He is married to Nicola from Essex, Canvey Islands, who knows the ins and outs of his business.
Liberty House has now evolved into a claimed $6 billion business which employs 2,000 people in five different sectors which includes steel, power, energy financial services and property.
His firm has bases in London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai where Gupta lived with his wife and their three daughters until last year. The family now lives in a mansion in Chepstow on the Welsh/English border.
Gupta has already saved more than 1,200 jobs in the steel industry over the past few months, having bought the high-end engineering companies owned by Caparo after it collapsed last autumn, rescuing 1,000 jobs, and re-opened the mothballed rolled coil steel mill at Newport, saving 150 jobs.
