National Steel Corporation

The National Steel Company of 1899 (a U.S. Steel predecessor) had no relationship with the National Steel Corporation of 1929 other than the name. Incorporated in New Jersey on February 27, 1899, had a capital stock of $27 million par $100 7% preferred ($26 million outstanding) and $32 million par $100 common (all outstanding). The remaining $1,000,000 of preferred stock were issued on April 28, 1899 to the Oliver & Snyder Steel Co. in exchange for the entire $100,000 stock of the Rosena Furnace Co. and associated properties. All of the companies acquired produced basic Bessemer steel with the exception of the Buhl Steel Co. who produced basic open hearth steel, but also had to buy ingots on the market to cover their own needs. The United States Steel Corporation was incorporated on February 25, 1901. It offered a premium of $125 of its new 7% preferred stock for each $100 par value of National Steel preferred stock and a similar $125 premium for each $100 par of National common stock. ==Detroit Iron & Steel Company==

The Detroit Iron & Steel Company was a predecessor to Great Lakes Steel Corporation and in 1902 built a greenfield blast furnace plant on Zug Island, the first modern blast furnace plant in the state of Michigan. The company was incorporated in Michigan on April 24, 1902, and issued 75,000 par $10 7% preferred and 75,000 par $10 common shares (split 2-for-1 on July 16, 1917). Issued $400,000 5% 10-year bonds dated May 2, 1904, due $40,000 annually from 1907 to 1916. Retired those bonds only three years later and broke even on cumulative preferred dividends in 1907. Issued $600,000 15-year 5% bonds dated July 1, 1909 (at construction of second blast furnace), due annually $40,000 till July 1, 1925. Paid 4% per year dividend on common stock until 1917, then 2.5% quarterly (10% annual - 20% when considering the stock split!) and also paid a few extra dividends. • President: Daniel Rhodes Hanna, since 1918 Howard Melville Hanna Jr. The joint venture included: • M. A. Hanna & Co • Solvay Process Company (owned 30 adjoining byproduct coke ovens) • Detroit capitalists The furnace had a capacity of 300 tons of foundry iron per day, 30 additional coke ovens were built concurrently and there were plans to eventually have 180 ovens. This was the first modern coke-filled blast furnace built in the state of Michigan. There were 120 coke ovens in 1905. The furnace was blown in on February 15, 1904 and in 1911 rebuild as a modern thin-lined, water cooled furnace. The B furnace (80x18.5ft; 300tpd, Arthur G. McKee type), directly adjoining to the east of A, was begun in early 1909 and blown in on July 21, 1910. The plant was located on the north east corner of the island. In 1917 the #Detroit Furnace Company was acquired. On May 1, 1920, the company was kicked off the Detroit Stock Exchange for failure to disclose operational and financial information. On November 1, 1920, Detroit Iron & Steel was among several companies that merged to form the Hanna Furnace Co. (Delaware). Its two blast furnaces had a capacity of 685 tons per day. The furnaces were relined: No. 1 in 1905, 1909, ... Pig Iron Industry in Michigan There were only 3 coke-burning blast furnaces in total in the state of Michigan (December 1914). The Wayne furnace ('''') of the Detroit Furnace Company was a small 62 feet high 75tpd hand filled coke furnace with pipe stoves more resembling a typical charcoal furnace. It had existed in one form or another since originally built in 1870. The Detroit Furnaces Co. when incorporated on April 1, 1906, with $150,000 in capital took it over as a charcoal furnace. The company was acquired by Detroit Iron & Steel in 1917. The furnace went out of blast for the last time in the fall of 1919 and was dismantled to make room for a power plant of the Detroit City Gas Company''. Michigan as the second largest producer of iron ore in the United States had however about a dozen charcoal furnaces in operation and ranked about 7th in pig iron production (1916). Michigan pig iron production statistics 1872-1911: ==Hanna Furnace Company==

Only three of the companies (names in bold) were relevant to the National Steel Corporation, the others were effectively dissolved before, their plants apparently having become technologically obsolete and no longer economically viable or no longer worthy of needed investment. Although in the case of the Buffalo Union Furnace Co. the company survived, but not its original plant. Production (whole company) }} A major reason for the company's decline contradicting the prosperity of the roaring twenties was its high cost of coke. In a last ditch effort it was proposed to capture some byproduct in their beehive coke ovens using a relatively cheap conversion experimentally operating at 4 of their ovens. Buffalo was not a great market for coke oven gas and Rogers-Brown had not made the transition to byproduct coke ovens and had fallen behind the competition. Pig Iron Industry in New York Iron smelting grew explosively in the state between 1904 and 1906. ==Producers Steamship Company==

Incorporated July 8, 1916 in Ohio. ==Michigan Steel Corp==

Michigan Steel Corp produced sheet steel for the automobile industry. It was effectively the first finishing department of the later Great Lakes Steel Corp steel works and was apparently quite successful as an independent company from 1923 till 1931. The company issued $500,000 in 15-year 6.75% bonds dated May 1, 1923, as collateral a sheet steel plant of 36,000 tons per year capacity valued at ca. $1 million. Incorporated in New Jersey on September 23, 1922 with George Rupert Fink president, the Ecorse, Michigan sheet mill plant on 40 acres ('''''') and built since December 1922, began production on July 5, 1923, first and foremost as a supplier of the automobile industry. The capacity of the plant more than doubled between 1923 and 1928 (to 180,000 tons and called for redemption November 1, 1931.). The company also had 220,000 no par shares authorized and outstanding; 22,000 originally issued for ($1,000,000 in) cash and split 10-for-1 in July 1928; at $50 per share in August 1928. With over $12,000,000 market capitalization as of October 1928, was traded on the Detroit Stock Exchange from October 1928 until February 17, 1931 and on October 20, 1928, began paying a quarterly dividend of cents. The company had previously paid dividends on the 22,000 shares in each of the 5 years 1924-1928, a total of $53.75 per share. till January 27, 1931. ==Great Lakes Steel Corp==

Incorporated on February 23, 1929. Large amounts of sand had to be brought to the 275 acres of marshland in Ecorse, Michigan, to raise it sufficiently above water level. ==National Steel Corp==

The National Steel Corp. (NSC) was a holding company, incorporated in Delaware on November 7, 1929. It had an authorized capital of 3,000,000 shares and 2,080,000 were issued in exchange for: • 1,120,000 shares or 4.7 NSC shares for each (of 237,720 outstanding) par $100 share of the Weirton Steel Company • 560,000 NSC shares for shares of certain Hanna subsidiaries • 400,000 NSC shares exchanged 1:1 for no par common shares of Great Lakes. Great Lakes shareholders also received warrants for up to 180,000 additional shares at fixed strike prices. In January 1931 NSC purchased all assets and assumed all liabilities of the Michigan Steel Corp (dissolved January 15, 1931) in exchange for cash and securities in the neighborhood of $12 million. The entire outstanding share capital of these companies was owned by NSC: • Weirton Steel Co. • Weirton Coal Company • The Hanna Furnace Corp (incorp. 1920 in Delaware) • The Hanna Furnace Corp (New York) • The Hanna Iron Ore Company (Delaware) • The Producers Steamship Company • Great Lakes Steel Corp • Michigan Steel Corp (Delaware) • Midwest Steel Corp NSC raised capital with $40 million 25-year 5% bonds dated April 1, 1931. During 1933 all outstanding 2,156,832 shares of no par value were exchanged 1:1 for shares of $25 par. The authorized capital in 1939 was still 3,000,000 shares and there were then 2,199,822 outstanding. ==Post war years==

The post-World War II years brought about record profits for the company as steel was in high demand. The company continued to post healthy profits in the 1970s, although the latter half of the decade saw some sharp and turbulent profit slumps. The increasing consumption of imported steel was often an attributed problem. It acquired United Financial Corporation, in 1979, adding another sundry item for its portfolio. United Financial was the parent company of Citizens Savings & Loan Association of San Francisco, which was the seventh‐largest savings and loan in the United States. ==1980s==

Beginning in 1980, the company reported a serious loss of demand and with it profits in its core steel business. A roller coaster earnings surge the next year crashed down the year after that due to a further increase in imports and low demand. In 1983, shareholders agreed to create National Intergroup, a holding company, and merge the steel business as one many units into it. The corporate reorganization was a further step to an already initiated arrangement that started in 1982, which broke the company into six independently managed units. The move was intended to better administer the company which had become diversified away from steel into aluminum and financial services. That same year, the workers of the Weirton mill purchased their operation from National Steel, forming an independent employee-owned corporation. In February 1984, Nippon Kokan K.K., a major Japanese steel producer, acquired 50% of National Steel from National Intergroup for US$292 million. Later in 1990, the Japanese firm would claim another 20% share from National Intergroup, which was eager to sell the steel business. The company stumbled through troubled years as it shed thousands of workers and faced bankruptcy in 1991. Amidst the savings and loan crisis in 1981, West Side Federal Savings and Loan Association of New York and the Washington Savings and Loan Association of Miami were acquired and merged with Citizens, creating the country's largest federally chartered savings and loan association. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board approved the first interstate consolidation of savings and loan associations largely because National Steel was willing to provide $75 million in cash to the new association, whose combined assets would be $6.8 billion with 136 branches in the three states. The branches were rebranded as First Nationwide Savings in 1982, when National Steel sold a 19% share of First Nationwide to the public. Ford Motor Company acquired First Nationwide for $493 million in 1985. National Steel spun-off its computer data subsidiary Genix which spun-off the current-day Corporate Election Services, a market leader in proxy statement and proxy fight services based in suburban Pittsburgh. ==1990s==

The company announced in 1991 that it would re-locate its longtime Pittsburgh headquarters to the South Bend, Indiana, area. In 1994, the company caused a stir in the industry when it terminated nearly all of its vice presidents, President and CFO, and replaced them by hiring nearly the complete executive staff of the U.S. Steel Gary Works, including V. John Goodwin who was named the new President of National Steel. U.S. Steel was incensed and filed a lawsuit which the two companies settled out-of-court in 1995. However these drastic leadership changes were short-lived, as Goodwin resigned in 1996, the result of a bitter dispute with the Japanese ownership and by 1998 nearly all of the U.S. Steel expatriates had departed from National. ==2000s==

In 2000, when an internal auditor, tipped off by an informer, discovered that longtime executive James Squires was receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from scrap suppliers. In August 2001, Squires was convicted in Federal Court of receiving kickbacks, and in 2002 was sentenced to two years imprisonment. Later he was forced to pay National approximately $3,000,000 in a civil lawsuit. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, the result of a deep depression in the industry. ==Bankruptcy==

The company would never again enjoy extended periods of profit and finally in March 2002, it filed for bankruptcy with only $2.3 billion in assets for $2.6 billion in debt. After a bidding war between AK Steel and U.S. Steel, in May 2003 the remains of National Steel were sold to U.S. Steel for $850 million and the assumption of $200 million in debt. US Steel continues to operate National's Keewatin, Minnesota mining operation and pellet plant under the new name of Keewatin Taconite or Keetac. ==Notes==