Metals firm Liberty House has signed a deal to buy two mothballed Lanarkshire steel plants.
The “back to back” agreement, which was confirmed on Thursday morning, involves the Scottish Government buying the Clydebridge and Dalzell plants from Tata Steel, and immediately selling them on to Liberty.
The sale will be done under the same terms with no cost to the taxpayer.
Liberty will take responsibility for reopening, operating and investing in the two sites as part of its wider strategy to build an integrated and sustainable steel business across the UK.
Business minister Fergus Ewing said: “When Tata Steel mothballed the Dalzell and Clydebridge plants, I said we would leave no stone unturned in the quest to find an alternative buyer.
“That is why we established a Scottish steel taskforce and why I am delighted that our support for the steel industry has paid off.”
Among the submissions from Sinclair’s legal team was the question of whether 37 years was “necessary, appropriate and fell within the judge’s discretion”.
They also argued about whether or not some of his earlier convictions should have been taken into account in determining the punishment part of the sentence as they were events which came after the 1977 murders.
Lady Paton, Lady Clark and Lord Malcolm delivered their opinion in a written judgment published on Thursday.
They said: “We do not accept that the sentencing judge selected 37 years because that represented the length of time which had passed since the commission of the murders.
“As the sentencing judge explains, he had concluded at the outset that a punishment part ‘in the high 30s’ should be imposed. That was his assessment of the gravity of the case.
“As he puts it, it was only ‘coincidentally’ that the period selected mirrored the passage of time since the murders. In the result we are not persuaded that there is any merit in this argument.”
They also rejected the arguments relating to his criminal record and refused the appeal.
Christine and Helen were targeted by Sinclair and his brother-in-law Gordon Hamilton, now dead, on a night-out at the World’s End pub on October 15 1977.
Their bodies were discovered the following day, having been dumped in remote locations. They had been raped, strangled and bound with their underwear.
Sinclair denied the charges and had claimed the girls consented to sex with him and pointed the finger at Hamilton, who died in 1996.
However, DNA analysis proved Sinclair had touched the ligatures used to tie the girls up.
Forensic scientists told how around 125 stains on the pieces of clothing used to restrain the girls had been examined during at least two years of meticulous testing.
Jurors, who took less than two-and-a-half hours to find Sinclair guilty of the 1977 crimes, were unaware the violent offender had already spent more than half of his life in prison.
He was just 16 when he strangled a seven-year-old girl to death in Glasgow in 1961 and in 1982 he was convicted of a string of sex attacks on young girls, including rape.
While still in prison, he was given a life sentence in 2001 for the murder of 17-year-old Mary Gallacher, who was raped and stabbed in Glasgow in 1978.
When he was sentenced at the High Court in Livingston for the World’s End murders, the judge said the words “evil” and “monster” seemed inadequate for Sinclair.