Celsa, the Barcelona based long steel producer, has asked banks to pitch for work on an initial public offering or a sale, Bloomberg reported, formalising an exit process its owners began preparing on October 9. The four investment funds that control about 98 percent of Celsa, creditors including Strategic Value Partners, Attestor, Deutsche Bank and GoldenTree among them, took control in the 2023 restructuring that pulled the company from the Rubiralta family.
The restructuring numbers are the sales pitch. Celsa posted a first half 2026 profit of 50.7 million euros and cut debt to about 1,134 million euros from nearly 3.7 billion euros, according to Shanghai Metals Market’s account of the exit preparation. The group has 7.5 million tonnes of steelmaking capacity across Spain, France and Poland, concentrated in the long products construction depends on.
Strategic interest is already in the frame. Naveen Jindal has been reported evaluating a bid of about 5 billion euros through private overseas companies, after exclusive talks to buy Thyssenkrupp’s steel business ended earlier this year. Jindal and Celsa did not comment on that report, and the discussions were described as preliminary.
An IPO or sale decision will price the whole creditor to owner model for European steel: whether lenders who seized a distressed strategic asset, cut its debt and restored profit can now sell it into a market shaped by tariffs and weak construction demand.