Big Steel survived and thrived after bankruptcy

Is Steel’s Revival a Model for Detroit?

Excerpts:

... The old saying, “As steel goes, so goes the nation,” was as much a threat as a boast.

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... steel’s savior was not the government bailouts it ardently sought but exactly what it so long tried to avoid: bankruptcy. Only when the companies failed were they successfully slimmed down and retooled into smaller but profitable ventures. As debate continues over what, if anything, should be done for G.M., Ford and Chrysler, the steel industry may offer a model.

The steel and auto industries are both capital-intensive enterprises that peaked a half-century ago and have been intermittently embattled ever since. Both secured peace with their unions by vastly expanding benefits, a bargain that eventually hobbled them. Both had entrenched layers of management that believed — despite all evidence — they could wish away change.

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Over the decades the companies had shed employees to stay afloat. Soon retirees greatly outnumbered the actual workers. At Bethlehem, the ratio was six retirees for every worker. All these retirees had good pensions and good health care plans, which they thought were guaranteed. But these costs were a tremendous weight on the companies.

Bankruptcy changed the rules, allowing the steel makers to unload billions of dollars in pension obligations onto the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and to cut more than 200,000 workers from their supposedly guaranteed medical care.

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Steel’s turn-around was dramatic. The 17 leading companies went from a combined loss of $1.1 billion in 2003 to an after-tax profit of $6.6 billion in 2004, according to an analysis done for an industry trade group. Ross sold International Steel to the Indian entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal for $4.5 billion in 2005, earning a tremendous return.

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In a G.M. bankruptcy, the number of product lines would be reduced, the management replaced and the investors wiped out. The enormous costs of its retirees could be off-loaded. It would be painful, just as it was with steel, but in the end someone could come in and pick up the pieces. Perhaps it would be one of the foreign carmakers, looking to expand. Perhaps it would be a distressed assets specialist, like Wilbur Ross.

Comment: A model for Detroit!