About LTV Steel

The LTV Corporation started out small, as the Ling Electric Company, a Dallas-based electrical construction and engineering firm in 1947. Growing through acquisitions and mergers through the 1950s, the company became known as Ling-Temco-Vought in 1961. The new conglomerate continued to acquire a variety of other companies, and in 1968 purchased a majority interest in Pittsburgh-based Jones & Laughlin Steel, which owned a large plant on the west banks of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, the former Otis Steel plant. In the 1970s, Ling-Temco-Vought renamed itself the LTV Corporation and began to streamline operations, spinning off or outright selling a number of subsidiaries, while increasing its ownership in Jones & Laughlin.

In 1984, LTV-owned Jones & Laughlin merged with Cleveland-based Republic Steel, forming LTV Steel, the nation's second-biggest steelmaker. In 1985, the company began shedding its non-steel assets, closing off or selling a number of facilities. In 1986, LTV declared bankruptcy and filed for reorganization. The steel company had excessive steelmaking capacity, and a number of older, antiquated plants. While reorganizing, LTV sold off its more of its non-steel companies, focusing its main operations on steel. Then LTV began closing off or selling many of its plants. Some were sold to outside investors and reopened as new companies, while others were closed outright. Within a decade, LTV Steel reduced its steelmaking capacity from 24 million tons a year to 10 million tons.Money from the plants sold off were used to pay off debt and for reinvestment into the two main steelmaking facilities LTV kept, the Cleveland Works and the Indiana Harbor Works (located in East Chicago). LTV also moved its headquarters from Dallas to Cleveland. From 1994 to 1998, the company was profitable and healthy, but losses began to mount, fueled largely by a flood of imported steel that was cheaper than what LTV could produce. The company took on more debt to purchase steel tube-producing companies. Losses continued in 2000, and on December 29, 2000 LTV Steel filed for bankruptcy again. While the community and the workers searched for ways to keep the company and its mills operating, the economy was in a major downturn, and the American steel industry was in its worst period for more than a decade. LTV was unable to save itself, and the company ceased operations in December of 2001. However, as part of its liquidation, LTV sold its Cleveland and Chicago production facilities in February 2002 to an outside group of investors who created the International Steel Group (ISG), and reopened the East Side mills of the Cleveland Works complex and the Indiana Harbor Works near Chicago. By summer of 2002, business was doing well enough that ISG contemplated opening Cleveland's West Side mill complex as well. Though LTV's history has come to an end, a new chapter in the history of Cleveland steel has opened up with ISG, as more than 130 years of steel production in Cleveland continues on.