CORUS, the Anglo-Dutch steel company, is expected this morning to recommend the 455p per share offer it has received from Tata Steel. It should.

This may not be exactly what the market had hoped. Corus’s share price was nearing 480p yesterday, buoyed by expectations that the Tata offer would tease out other bids. CSN, the Brazilian steelmaker, is rumoured to be interested. So is Novolipetsk and fellow Russian Severstal, which attempted a somewhat implausible impersonation of a white knight to Arcelor in the latter’s failed defence against the bid from Mittal Steel. Commodity producers are hot and the City would love a repeat of the frenzied bidding for Canada’s Inco and Falconbridge.

But the Corus board so far has only one offer on the table. Both financially and culturally, it is a good one.

Tata’s offer is pricey, more expensive in multiples of future earnings than the exit valuation of Arcelor. Corus cannot boast the best margins in the business. And the offer is cash — another bidder may yet materialise, but the question is whether a rival offer would come in the form of ready money or some combination of cash and equity with an uncertain valuation.

For the Corus management and the Dutch works councils, who must in the end be consulted on any transaction, Tata's reputation for probity and philanthropy will have weighed heavily in their decision. Tata Steel is an emerging market company, but it is not an upstart vehicle ruled by a Russian tycoon. The Tata group is more than a century old. Much of its profit is funnelled into charities set up by the founding family.

Nevertheless, the Dutch (and British) workforce should not be fooled. There is painful restructuring in store. Tata Steel has a workforce of 38,000 people by comparison with 41,000 at Corus. Batlivala and Karani, a Bombay-based brokerage, calculates that Tata spends $67 on manpower for each tonne of steel, by comparison with the $137 a tonne spent by Corus.

Tata Consultancy is one of India’s largest software outsourcing firms, a vast army of Indian call centre workers and programmers are no doubt waiting to get their teeth into the Corus back office. Meanwhile Tata’s Indian mills will be hoping to ship tonnes of slab steel to be finished into automotive Dutch rolling mills.

Sooner or later, Corus will be globalised. Tata Steel is offering the steelmaker a cash offer and the possibility of a competitive future in the world market. The Corus board seems to be calculating that if you are going to be restructured, it is better to have it done by an Indian dynasty than by a Russian oligarch.

Waiting for Egg, sunny side up

TURNS out there is something worse than having all your eggs in one basket. It’s having one Egg in your basket.

The Prudential reported an 11 per cent increase in sales in the first nine months, but the success in the insurance business was soured by the news of continuing losses at the internet bank Egg. In financial terms this is insignificant. Analysts dismiss Egg as little more than 2 per cent of the valuations of the Pru.

But Egg saps disproportionately at both Mark Tucker’s time and his reputation. The Pru’s chief executive has spent much more than 2 per cent of his energy on appointing a new boss and setting out a strategy for Egg.

Tempting as it must be to shut it down, Egg has 3.5 million customers and a promising credit card business. The plans to expand into mortgages and other products are not convincing. Selling the business would be good, but that requires a buyer. And while it may make sense to bring the business fully in-house by rebranding it as The Pru online, that will do little to help with Egg’s problematic personal loan book and could undermine the Pru’s good name.

The Prudential finds itself making the pretty hollow case for combining banking and insurance. Bancassurance can, on occasion, work. It does in Spain. Closer to home, HBOS has shown that a bank can sell at least general insurance products, too. Mr Tucker’s best hope for Egg is time. After all, Lloyds TSB endured years of grief for its purchase of Scottish Widows, but now that the business is showing signs of healthy life, it has suitors.

• A PARLOUR game that’s harder than naming five memorable Belgians: thinking of five great chief operating officers.

  Land Securities yesterday announced that Mark Collins, the COO, is going. Quite rightly, so is his job.

  For “COO” is not a destination in life, it’s an intersection. Either it’s a phase, a stint as implementation manager driving through corporate change. Or it’s a sop for a near-miss CEO.

  Either way, COOs should know that their title is just shorthand for TTFN.

  james.harding@thetimes.co.uk

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