Steel industry on decline, U.S. Steel official says

BY ANDREA HOLECEK, Times of Northwest Indiana Business Writer

MERRILLVILLE | The steel market has come to an abrupt halt, U.S. Steel Corp. COO John Goodish said Tuesday.

"Many of us have seen the last 4-3/4 years as the best in the history of steel and we've never seen it stop as it did either," Goodish said.

The chief operating officer and vice president of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, Goodish was the keynote speaker at the Midwest Chapter of the Association of Iron & Steel Technology's dinner meeting attended by 750 members and guests.

Goodish spoke on his company's role as a global leader. The company is following the IBM model called the Enterprise of the Future.

The model has five core attributes: hungry for change; innovation beyond customer imagination; globally integrated; disruptive by nature and genuine not just generous, Goodish said explaining how U.S. Steel follows each of those tenets.

Like many other steelmakers and companies dealing in commodities, U.S. Steel had record profits and sales in the first two quarters of 2008. Prices began slipping in late August as the stock market turned bearish and customer demand fell. The company's share price was a record high of $191.96 on June 25. It closed Tuesday at $47.18 a share.

Goodish declined Tuesday to comment on his company's pricing, its production levels or the current state of its contractor relationships.

"We stay in line with current demand," he told The Times.

Goodish joined U.S. Steel in 1970. He served as general manager of Gary Works from 1994-1996, when he left to become president of Pittsburgh-based USX Engineers Consultants Inc. In 2000, he was appointed president of U.S. Steel in Kosice, in the Slovak Republic. He served there until March 2003 when he assumed the post of executive vice president-international and diversified businesses. Goodish was named executive vice president of operations in June 2003.

The Association of Iron & Steel Technology is based in Warrendale, Pa. It is an international technical association of more than 13,000 professional and student members representing iron and steel producers, their allied suppliers and related academia.