Tangshan Iron & Steel, Handan Iron & Steel and Chengde Xinxin Vanadium & Titanium confirmed that Tangshan would acquire the two sister companies through a share swap.
But analysts greeted the deal with scepticism and warned that consolidation in China's steel industry faced huge hurdles and would proceed slowly at best.
“This group is an example of an enterprise that is big but not strong,” said Xu Zhongbo, a steel industry consultant and professor at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing. “Unlike [China's biggest steelmaker] Baosteel, the three shareholding companies under the Hebei Group are no more than puppets . . . merging them into one will not change that.”
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