Steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta expands into financial services

Steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta has launched a new financial services arm Wyelands Capital as he expands his business empire in the UK.

The Liberty House executive chairman's umbrella group, GFG Alliance, announced the expansion last week.

The expansion follows Gupta's acquisition in December 2016 of Wyelands Bank Plc, which has been functioning as an "industry-friendly" deposit-taking institution focused on providing working capital solutions for UK and international companies.

"Wyelands Bank is already filling a very important gap in the market for working capital solutions. Through Wyelands Capital, the GFG Alliance is determined to engage the best and most experienced figures from the financial services sector, in order to establish a powerful presence in the financial services market and make a real difference to the growth prospects of industry in the UK and globally," said Jay Hambro, chief executive of Wyelands Capital and chief Investment Officer of the GFG Alliance.

During the initial phase, Wyelands Capital will deliver structured finance and capital markets expertise to the GFG Alliance with a view to serving wider markets in the future, the company said.

The GFG Alliance is an association between Sanjeev Gupta's business interests and partner P K Gupta to forge an "agile, sustainable, non-cyclical, integrated, global business model".

Its key focus is the creation of a resilient supply chain - from liquid metal produced from recycled scrap and renewable energy, to highly-engineered products manufactured locally on a global basis, funded through a pioneering financial approach.

The Group has a global footprint spanning 30 countries and comprises five distinct businesses, including Wyelands Capital, an innovative financial services enterprise.

GFG businesses claim to have invested more than 500 million pounds in the past two years in the UK, making it one of the country's fastest-growing enterprises.

It is now among Britain's largest steel and engineering employers with nearly 5,000 staff.

More recently it has agreed deals to acquire major US steel and iron ore assets and is in the process of securing large-scale Australian steel and mining assets.

Wales-based Gupta has been on an acquisition spree as part of what he has branded as a GreenSteel vision of a sustainable future for steel production, which will facilitate investment in engineering products and reduce the supply-chain gaps in the UK.