mumbai mar 30 having decided to put the entire uk operations on the block tata steel today said it was a logical way of derisking its businesses after the bookvalue turned fully negative in the last one year after being hit by an avalanche of adversities nine years after acquiring corus for over usd 14 billion and to become europes secondlargest steel maker tata steel has finally decided to exit the uk operations as it battles to control deteriorating financial performance selling british operations in part or full is the logical way of derisking our business as a whole and tata steel europe in particular the book value of british operations have tuned nearly zero in the past four quarters tata steel group executive director for finance and corporate koushik chatterjee told reporters here last year the company had written off 2 billion pounds in impairment costs and that was almost the entire impairment cost if there is any remnant of it we will fully take care of that there is a perfect storm in materials industry and our british operations have been hit by an avalanche of adversities he added tata steel employs about 15000 people in britain at sites including the giant port talbot plant in wales which alone employs about 4000 and scunthorpe on what is the timeline for a decision and whether they are confident of getting a buyer given market conditions he said we only took this decision yesterday and we are awaiting the response from the board of tata steel europe we want a resolution at the earliest he further said the company has three firm proposals from financial investors for the long product business in britain so we are not ruling out anything the last two years the british operations have been really in trouble when asked if a sale does not materialise and what is the plan b and the way forward he said well cross that bridge when we come to it on whether the company is in touch with british government chatterjee said we have been having very constructive discussions with british authorities and we hope to continue the same we will not be shying away from any options ben nrb abk