thyssenkrupp seeks to divest AST

Thyssenkrupp is seeking either a partnership or a sale for its Italian subsidiary, Acciai Speciali Terni (AST), Kallanish learns from the company.

Pursuing its restructuring strategy, the company is considering for certain assets “… the best prospects for the future – a place under the thyssenkrupp umbrella, in a partnership or outside the company. With this reassessment of the portfolio, we have taken some difficult decisions that were long overdue and will now implement them systematically. thyssenkrupp will emerge smaller but stronger from the transformation”, Chief Executive Officer Martina Merz said in a note sent to Kallanish.

Those businesses for which thyssenkrupp sees no sustainable future prospects within the group for various and very specific reasons will be managed separately. They will be combined in the Multi-Tracks segment under the leadership of Dr. Volkmar Dinstuhl, head of mergers and acquisitions at thyssenkrupp AG. For the segments Plant Technology, the stainless steel plant (AST) in Terni, Italy, including the associated sales organisation, Powertrain Solutions and Springs and Stabilisers, thyssenkrupp is seeking either divestment or a partnership.

Meanwhile the unions at AST as asking an urgent meeting with the government to discuss not only the future of Terni but also the state of the national specialty steel sector. “The supervisory board of thyssenkrupp considers Terni to be no longer strategic… AST is ending up as a sort of ‘bad company’ waiting to be sold,”, trade union Fiom-Cgil says in a letter sent to Kallanish.