Nippon Steel, a major shareholder at Brazilian flats producer Usiminas, has no plans to abandon the local steelmaker, despite the ongoing disputes involving Nippon and fellow major shareholder Ternium, a top executive at Nippon Steel said Wednesday.
Kazuhiro Egawa, Nippon Steel’s head of operations for the Americas, told Estado de Minas both Nippon and Ternium are seeking to end ongoing legal disputes, including the most recent one involving the election of a CEO.
“We want Usiminas to shine with the same brightness it had in the past. We’ll talk between [us] the shareholders to implement more clear rules, to avoid similar disputes [like the CEO dispute] in the future. But [Usiminas’] operations haven’t been affected by the recent CEO changes,” the executive said.
Egawa said Nippon Steel doesn’t intend to leave Usiminas, but instead it expects to focus on the company’s restructuring, based on increased competitiveness and new technologies.