British Steel collapsed in 2019 — 5,000 jobs lost overnight

British Steel entered insolvency on 22 May 2019, putting 5,000 jobs directly at risk and threatening 20,000 more in the supply chain. The company had been owned by private equity firm Greybull Capital since 2016, when it bought the assets from Tata Steel for £1. The collapse followed a breakdown in rescue talks between Greybull and the UK government.

The causes were a perfect storm: Brexit uncertainty had caused European customers to hoard inventory and then stop ordering, the weak pound raised input costs, and the US-China trade war depressed steel prices globally. The UK government had already provided a £120 million bridging loan in April 2019 to help the company meet EU emissions regulations, but Greybull could not secure the additional financing needed to keep the company afloat.

The government appointed EY as special manager to seek a buyer. In November 2019, Chinese steelmaker Jingye Group agreed to acquire British Steel for £70 million. The takeover was completed in March 2020. Jingye later invested more than £1.2 billion, but by 2025 the Scunthorpe site was still losing about £700,000 per day. The case became a textbook example of how private equity ownership, Brexit uncertainty, and global trade tensions can combine to destroy a formerly viable industrial business.