TPT May 2007

From the

AmericaS

102

une

2007

But it is not clear that the newly collegial Republicans will find

Democrats responsive. Mr Rangel said that they remained highly

skeptical about signs of Republican flexibility on trade issues and

that he had not seen anything

“acceptable to a broad number of

members”

on his side.

He added,

“The question will be whether, at the end of the day,

things really have changed. So far, the answer would be no.”

Steel

Russia’s Evraz completes acquisition

of Oregon Steel Mills

Evraz Group SA, the biggest steelmaker in Russia, announced

completion of its purchase of Oregon Steel Mills Inc by means

of a

“short-form merger”

of the Portland-based steel maker with

Evraz’s wholly owned subsidiary Oscar Acquisition Merger Sub Inc.

The transaction followed on a January 12 announcement of the

acceptance of an all-cash offer by Oscar to purchase all outstanding

shares of Oregon Steel common stock. Payment has been made

for all tendered shares.

Alexander Frolov, chairman and chief executive officer of Evraz,

was ambitious as well as ebullient in assessing the prospective

fortunes of the combined company in the market for rails. He said,

“We welcome Oregon Steel’s employees into the Evraz family, and

look forward to jointly building a world-class company with efficient

operations, diverse revenue streams, and high margins. From day

one, the combined company is a global leader in the important rails

market, with a strong presence in the two largest railway countries.”

Mr Frolov said that the Russian-American combination could expect

to benefit from

“vertical integration synergies”

as well as improved

margins from access to lucrative downstream markets and a reliable

source of Russian slabs to support an already low US cost base.

The forward-looking program shifts the emphasis away from what

it was in November 2006, when Evraz, partly owned by billionaire

Roman Abramovich, agreed to buy Oregon Steel for $2.3 billion.

Then, the big news was that this would, if it materialized, be the

biggest-ever purchase in the US by a Russian company. The

aggressive Evraz bid for all of the American steel maker was frankly

intended to secure a foothold in the US and – almost incidentally, it

seemed – to create the world’s largest producer of rail tracks and

wheels.

But, even that early in the process, it was not lost on industry

observers that the purchase would raise Evraz to tenth place

among world steel makers, ahead of Germany’s ThyssenKrupp AG.

Bloomberg News observed that Russian steel producers and their

counterparts in India and Brazil, bolstered by rising stock values,

were looking to enhance crude-steel processing in North America

and Europe to make such higher-value products as pipe and tube

for the oil and gas industry.

• Al Breach, chief strategist with UBS AG in Moscow, told

Bloomberg in November that the Evraz-Oregon Steel