National Steel Corporation

Large steel producing operations were located near Detroit, providing the company with low shipping costs[2].

The post-World War II years brought about record profits for the company as steel was in high demand.

[2] In 1983, shareholders agreed to create National Intergroup, a holding company, and merge the steel business as one many units into it.

That same year, the workers of the Weirton mill purchased their operation from National Steel, forming an independent employee-owned corporation.

[12] However these drastic leadership changes were short-lived, as Goodwin resigned in 1996, the result of a bitter dispute with the Japanese ownership and by 1998 nearly all of the U.S. Steel expatriates had departed from National.

[13] The darkest days of National's management history occurred in 2000, when an internal auditor, tipped off by an informer, discovered that longtime executive James Squires was receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks from scrap suppliers.

This was an especially painful event for the company because Squires had been hailed as a "self-made man" who had advanced from a mill laborer to a Senior Vice President over the course of his 42-year career, and had professed to be the pinnacle of financial stewardship.

[citation needed] It filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, the result of a deep depression in the industry at the time combined with the laggard leadership.