Nippon Steel has agreed to buy United States Steel for $14.1 billion in cash, ending months of uncertainty about the future of the historic American metal producer.
Nippon will pay $55 per share in cash, the companies said in a statement. The deal is a 142% premium to U.S. Steel’s share price on the last trading day before it announced the review and Cliffs revealed it had made a bid.
U.S. Steel, a stalwart of American industry with roots stretching back more than a century, has been considering potential transactions since mid-August, after rejecting an offer from rival Cleveland-Cliffs for $7.25 billion. The announcement kicked off a dramatic few weeks in the steel market, with the influential United Steelworkers union throwing its support behind Cliffs’ pugnacious chief executive, while a little-known buyer startled the industry with an even larger offer, before abruptly pulling its interest days later.
U.S. Steel traces its roots back to 1901 when J. Pierpont Morgan merged a collection of assets with Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel. The company has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years under CEO David B. Burritt as its investment focus has pivoted away from traditional blast-furnace production of steel from iron ore toward more modern and less-polluting plants that remelt metal scrap instead.