AP – Nippon Steel said on Friday it has postponed the expected closing of its USD14.1 billion takeover of United States (US) Steel by three months after the US Department of Justice requested more documentation related to the deal.
Tokyo-based Nippon Steel Corp said the deal, already approved by US Steel’s shareholders, is still expected to go through.
“Nippon Steel will continue to fully cooperate with the examination of the relevant authorities,” it said in a statement.
The sale has drawn opposition from US President Joe Biden’s administration on economic and national security grounds, and from former president Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential candidate in November’s election.
The new timing could push the closing beyond the election, but Nippon Steel denied the delay was related to that.
Initially the deal was supposed to have closed by September. Now it will close by December, meaning it could still close as early as September, according to a company spokesperson, who requested the anonymity customary at Japanese companies.
More than 98 per cent of the Pittsburgh-based US Steel Corp shares voted at a special investor meeting in April approved the takeover. Nippon Steel has said it has prepared adequate financing to go through with the deal. First announced in December last year, the merger of US Steel into Nippon Steel has raised concerns about what that might mean for unionised workers, supply chains and US national security.
The United Steelworkers union has opposed the acquisition.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met Biden last month. But there was no indication the topic came up in the summit.
When Biden visited the Pittsburgh headquarters of United Steelworkers recently, he reiterated his opposition to the Nippon Steel purchase, stressing US Steel “has been an iconic American company for more than a century and it should remain totally American”.
The US steel industry has declined over the decades as global steel production came to be dominated initially by Japan, and more recently by China.
