Nippon Steel said on Friday it has postponed the expected closing of its $14.1 billion takeover of US Steel by three months after the US Department of Justice requested more documents related to the deal.
The deal, which has already been approved by US Steel shareholders, is still expected to go through, Tokyo-based Nippon Steel said.
“Nippon Steel will continue to fully cooperate with the investigations conducted by the relevant authorities,” it said in a statement.
The sale sparked opposition from the administration of President Joe Biden on economic and national security grounds, and from former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee in the November elections.
The new timing could push the closure until after the election, but Nippon Steel denied the delay was related to that.
Initially the deal was supposed to close by September. Now it will close by December, meaning it could still close as early as September, according to a company spokesperson, who requested anonymity typical of Japanese companies.
More than 98% of Pittsburgh-based US Steel Corp.'s shares voted at a special investor meeting in April to approve the takeover. Nippon Steel said it had prepared sufficient financing to proceed with the deal.
It was first announced in December last yearUS Steel's merger into Nippon Steel has raised concerns about what it could mean for unionized workers, supply chains and US national security.
The United Steelworkers union opposed the takeover.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with Biden last month. But there was no indication that the topic had been raised at the summit.
when Biden visited the United Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh Recently, he reiterated his opposition to the purchase of Nippon Steel, stressing that US Steel “has been an iconic American company for more than a century, and must remain all-American.”
The US steel industry has declined over the past decades, with global steel production first dominated by Japan and, more recently, China. Under the agreement, US Steel will retain its name and headquarters in Pittsburgh, where it was founded in 1901.
