Thomas Graham, former president of US Steel, has resigned his post on the recently appointed three man board of troubled Slovak steel maker VSŽ Holding a.s., a VSŽ spokesman said on February 17.
No reason for Graham's resignation was given but the spokesman said an extraordinary general meeting on February 19 would vote on a successor. Graham became a board member in December after major changes following revelations of deep financial problems at VSŽ, Slovakia's biggest company.
The spokesman said the EGM had been called to deal with the question of a replacement for Graham, to change the remuneration structure for supervisory board members and to change the company's name from VSŽ Holding to VSŽ. No further details were available.
VSŽ ran into trouble late last year when it could not meet an early $35 million repayment on a syndicated loan arranged by Merrill Lynch. Company president Gabriel Eichler said on February 9 that VSŽ would probably post full year 1998 losses of five billion crowns ($132 million) after posting a pre-tax profit in 1997 of around 600 million crowns.
