July 21, 2006 Esmark Announces Wheeling-Pitt Board

July 21, 2006, Post-Tribune (Merrillville, Ind.), Post-Tribune Staff Report

CHICAGO — Undaunted by a rebuff from Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp. officials, Esmark Inc. CEO James P. Bouchard on Thursday continued his quest to take over the West Virginia steel company.

Esmark revealed its own slate of board directors for the company that draw from various disciplines including business, academia and the metals industries.

Esmark also announced it still intends to file a preliminary proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission shortly in relation to its takeover proposal.

Esmark’s action comes a day after Wheeling-Pitt’s CEO James G. Bradley brushed aside Esmark’s takeover threat, saying the company still intends to pursue an alliance with Brazil’s Companhia Siderurgica Nacional, or CSN, instead.

Esmark countered that it does not believe that the management and many of the directors of Wheeling-Pitt are acting in the stockholders best interests as evidenced by the persistent operational problems and strategic issues at the company.

“We believe Wheeling-Pitt shareholders deserve a change for the better,” Bouchard said.

“We have assembled an extremely talented and diverse slate of directors with decades of experience at the management and board levels in some of the world’s leading corporations.”

Esmark’s proposed slate includes: James P. Bouchard, 45, founder, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Esmark Inc.; Craig T. Bouchard, 52, co-founder, president and chief financial officer of Esmark; C. Frederick Fetterolf, 78, former president and chief operating officer of Aluminum Company of America Inc. (Alcoa); and George Munoz, 55, former president and chief executive officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and former assistant secretary for management and chief financial officer of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Also, James V. Koch, Ph.D., 63, former president and professor of economics of Old Dominion University; James Todd, 77, former chairman and chief executive officer of Birmingham Steel and its predecessors; and Albert G. Adkins, 58, former vice president-accounting, controller, and chief accounting officer for Marathon Oil Corporation and controller and assistant controller for the United States Steel Corporation.

Also, Joseph Peduzzi, 41, who has built and managed trading firms with special emphasis on risk management and arbitrage, and Clark Burrus, 77, who previously served as senior vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago, now J.P. Morgan Chase.