Institutional shareholders in Corus, the remains of state-owned British Steel, have started selling down their stakes, as India's Tata Steel edged closer to a £4.3bn (€6.4bn) takeover of the company.

AllianceBernstein, a fund manager which had a 5.5% stake at the beginning of the week, has reduced its stake to 3.8%. It sold 1.5 million shares on Monday at 473p and on Tuesday sold a further 11.2 million shares at 467p.