India’s Reliance Industries bids for LyondellBasell

Reliance Industries Ltd., owner of the world’s largest oil-refining complex, has made a cash bid for bankrupt polyolefins supplier LyondellBasell.

Terms of the offer have not been disclosed, but analysts at the Middle East North African Financial Network have said that Reliance could pay US$10 billion to US$12 billion for the company.

“LyondellBasell has received a preliminary non-binding offer from Reliance Industries to acquire for cash a controlling interest in the company contemporaneously with the company’s emergence from Chapter 11 reorganisation,” LyondellBasell said in a press release. 

If completed, Reliance’s takeover of LyondellBasell would be the second-largest chemical acquisition this year, following the US$18.8 billion purchase of Rohm & Hass Co. by Dow Chemical Co.

Rotterdam, Netherlands-based LyondellBasell posted a loss of US$7.3 billion in 2008.

Reliance, India’s largest private company, is controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani. The company reported revenue of approximately US$32.4 billion in the fiscal year ending in March, with almost 60 per cent coming from refining and the rest from petrochemicals.