Oleg Deripaska, a major Russian shareholder in Corus, has called on the steel maker to consider abandoning the UK if it fails to turn around its losses. Five years after British Steel merged with the Dutch company Koninklijke Hoogovens to create Corus, the company is still unprofitable. The merger was supposed to create economies of scale, but since then losses of some £2bn have piled up and it is the company's UK arm that is seen to be dragging down the group while the Dutch division powers ahead. The group last month reported a £208m loss for 2003, despite huge demand for steel from China and India.
