Tata expected to swoop for lossmaking Air India

Indian conglomerate Tata Group is expected to swoop for Air India, the lossmaking state carrier that successive governments have tried to sell. The owner of steel plants and Jaguar Land Rover is set to make an initial bid after New Delhi sweetened the terms of the sale to attract buyers, said two people with knowledge of the situation. The 152-year-old conglomerate, a $113b-revenue group, plans to file an expression of interest for the airline before a deadline for bids closes on Monday. It comes after New Delhi revised the terms of a sale with plans to divest 100% of its equity share capital in Air India and reduce the amount of debt a buyer would have to take on. “This is the first step of a long process,” said one of the people about Tata’s EOI. Tata declined to comment. The move takes the former chairman of Tata’s holding company Ratan Tata one step closer to reclaiming Air India. Tata’s ancestor J.R.D. Tata had founded the country’s first private carrier Tata Airlines in 1932 as a courier service before it became Air India and was nationalised in 1953. Tata Group has often been touted as a potential suitor for Air India, but onerous sale conditions in the past have deterred it and other investors from bidding. Turning round Air India will incur “huge, huge costs”, said aviation analyst Ashish Nainan at Care Ratings. “It will take years for them to turn it round and I don’t think anyone has unlimited capital right now.”<br/>