Late Wednesday, Germany's largest steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG announced that it would be relieving three of its board members at the end of the year. A press release form the company said that Olaf Berlien, Edwin Eichler, and Juergen Claassen had "agreed to lay down their functions."
ThyssenKrupp said that the "Supervisory Board had mandated an efficiency audit with regard to their role in the Steel Americas projects for their meeting on November 20, 2012. This audit identified as one of the key reasons for the negative development of the projects that the former Executive Board had based their decisions on a series of assumptions and key data which were either clearly too optimistic or later proved to be incorrect."
"Further to the issues with Steel Americas, ThyssenKrupp is currently confronted with the disclosure of a series of corruption and cartel cases. This also raises the question of the current leadership culture within the Group."