Hindalco Industries Ltd. received a conditional approval from a European authority for its $2.6-billion proposed acquisition of aluminium parts maker Aleris Corp., according to Bloomberg.
But this came only after Novelis Corp.—the subsidiary of billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla's Hindalco—agreed to sell the entire automotive body sheet business of Aleris in Europe, Bloomberg reported citing the European Union's emailed statement. The selloff includes Aleris' production plant in Duffel, Belgium and R&D assets, it said.
The EU had earlier objected to the Novelis-Aleris deal on fears that it could reduce choice for consumers and increase prices.
Hindalco, in an interview to BloombergQuint, had said it expects the Aleris acquisition to be completed by December this year against its earlier target of September.
The Novelis-Aleris deal would be a mix of equity and debt and will bring synergy of about $150 million from the third year of operations, Hindalco had said in a presentation at the time of announcement. But it requires three key anti-trust approvals from the authorities in the U.S., Europe and China.
Though Hindalco won a conditional approval from the EU, the company faced a regulatory hurdle in the U.S. The Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the purchase of Aleris by Novelis Corp., Bloomberg reported last month.
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