(Reuters) -U.S. Steel said on Wednesday it had appointed three American directors to its board, more than a month after Nippon Steel closed its $14.9-billion acquisition of the company.
The company, which is now a subsidiary of Nippon Steel, said its board now has seven directors, four of whom are U.S. citizens, including three independent U.S. directors.
The appointments include John Donovan, a member of the U.S. government’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee from 2019 to 2023, and Robert Stevens, former CEO of defense giant Lockheed Martin.
Timothy Keating, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who previously served as the Pentagon’s director of joint staff and as commander of the United States Pacific Command, was also named to the board.
Nippon signed a national security agreement with the Trump administration last month in a bid to get the go-ahead for its acquisition of U.S. Steel after facing high-level political opposition. It also pledged a board with a U.S. majority and an American CEO to quell concerns about the deal.
The agreement gave U.S. President Donald Trump a non-economic golden share and the authority to name a member to the board.
However, it was not immediately clear whether any of the board members were directly appointed by Trump.
The deal cedes an unusual level of control from the companies to the U.S. government, giving the latter veto power over a raft of corporate decisions ranging from idling plants to cutting production capacity as well as moving jobs overseas.
(Reporting by Utkarsh Shetti and Aishwarya Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)
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