IN THIS ISSUE:
* KATRINA FOLLOWUP
MSCI Member Companies Waiting to Determine Katrina Damage
* EDUCATION
Pre-Work for Small Business Seminar to be Sent Soon
Fall Olin Partners Course List Offered at MSCI Discount Rates
* IN MEMORIAM
Longtime Industry Figure Carl Liebovich Dies
* BRIEFINGS
Items of Interest to MSCI Members
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KATRINA FOLLOWUP
MSCI Member Companies Waiting to Determine Katrina Damage (Top)
Ten days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, MSCI member companies with facilities in and around the city are in some cases still unsure whether their facilities can be salvaged. In nearly every case, however, all employees are accounted for, although many are now without homes.
“Some of our employees and their families have been impacted, and a lot of our customers have been as well, but on the whole, we are lucky,” said Stephen E. Makarewicz, president of Ryerson Tull South, which operates a general line service center in Metarie, Louisiana, near the New Orleans airport. The facility, which was shut down on August 29 as the hurricane approached the area, reopened for business on Tuesday of this week. It sustained wind damage and some internal moisture.
Of 36 employees at the 60,000-square-foot facility, six have lost their homes. The company has started a relief fund, matching employee contributions dollar for dollar, and the six homeless employees have moved in with other Ryerson Tull workers on a temporary basis.
That’s far better than the fate of the Reliance Steel & Aluminum, Pierce Aluminum and Namasco facilities in New Orleans.
“We got the place buttoned up and evacuated before the storm hit, and our people are all accounted for, but we have not been able to get to our facility. It’s flooded, and we don’t know anything about its condition,” said David H. Hannah, chief executive officer of Reliance.
Although all 28 employees have been located, the status of their homes is unknown. “There’s a lot of information that we’re not able to get,” Hannah said. “It’s a terrible thing. Just think about the kids, living with relatives, moving to different places, trying to find a place to go to school. It just goes on and on.”
But he added, “As long as our employees are safe, the rest of that stuff we can fix.”
The Reliance facility, under the Aluminum and Stainless name, sells marine grade aluminum, stainless and red metals. All employees remain on the payroll, and customers are being served by the company’s plant in Lafayette, Louisiana.
At Pierce Aluminum, CEO Robert W. Pierce says his New Orleans site is inaccessible, but damage is not thought to be extensive. “We’ve seen photographs of the NASA site down the street, and that’s dry,” Pierce said. “Emergency people tell us that our site is dry now, but may have had one or two feet of water. But there’s no access because the roads are submerged.”
Fourteen of the 16 employees have been located. Customers for marine-grade aluminum are being served by other Pierce facilities around the country, including the company’s Lafayette service center. All employees are being paid while the plant is closed.
Namasco Corp. President Bill Partalis said his company has been unable to regain access to its New Orleans service center. “We don’t know when we will get into it,” he said. “All of our employees are accounted for.”
Namasco is serving customers from its facilities in Houston, Texas, and Birmingham, Alabama.
Bill Jones, president and CEO of O’Neal Steel, Inc., said damage to his company’s facilities in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Mobile and Birmingham, Alabama, was light compared with some, but a number of employees have lost their homes, many customers still can’t be reached, and many areas, with banks and ATMs obliterated, have devolved to a cash economy. O’Neal’s Lafayette plant was undamaged, but its Mobile facility sustained roof damage and was without power for a week.
“The reports from our employees and customers are that the damage was just catastrophic; an area the size of the United Kingdom has been obliterated,” said Jones. “We have employees who are living with other employees. One employee who lives in the New Orleans area has been told he can’t even go to his home for 30 to 45 days because it is completely under water. You know the outcome is not good.”
Like Ryerson Tull, O’Neal matches every dollar raised by its employees for hurricane relief. The company shipped a lot of household goods to both Lafayette and Mobile. As for customers, “Quite frankly, we have not been able to reach many of them. We don’t know the extent of their damage. Those in the New Orleans area, and those directly along the Gulf Coast, are obviously not in operation. There’s no power to any of those areas.”
Jones decried press coverage critical of relief efforts. “Quite frankly, what we see is an incredible effort by the federal government, state government, local governments, companies, and just everyone,” Jones said. “The impact of this was as big as the tsunami. It will take a long, long time to figure out everything that needs to be done.”
O’Neal was well prepared for the hurricane, Jones said. Facilities were buttoned down. Employees were evacuated early. Although the Mobile branch was without power for a week, telephone calls to it were automatically rerouted to other locations. “All of this is why, thank God, we don’t have any serious injuries or deaths that we know of,” he said.
Meanwhile, ADS Logistics, the transportation services company, said companies organizing donations such as clothing, school supplies, toiletries and nonperishable food for disaster relief may be able to piggyback their shipments on ADS trucks. “If your company is looking for transport of relief supplies and would like to add your contributions to trucks we may be putting together in our core Midwest region, please give us a call and we will endeavor to consolidate your shipments with ours,” ADS said. For more information, 708-922-2036.
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EDUCATION
Pre-Work for Small Business Seminar to be Sent Soon (Top)
Pre-work for participants in the MSCI-Olin Partnership Seminar on Small and Family-Owned Business will be sent soon to seminar participants. If you’ve thought about registering, now is the time to act so that you lose no time preparing for the sessions.
The seminar, organized by MSCI and the Olin School of Business, runs October 17-19 at the Charles F. Knight Executive Education Center on the campus of Washington University in St.Louis. It features an outstanding faculty, topics tailored to meet the interests of smaller and family-owned companies in the metals industry, and a world-class learning environment.
For more information or to register, see:
http://www.msci.org/SeniorManagement.aspx
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EDUCATION
Fall Olin Partners Course List Offered at MSCI Discount Rates (Top)
The fall list of courses from the Olin Partners program is available, and MSCI members who enroll for these quick, informative, and useful executive education courses can attend any or all of them at substantial discounts to listed prices.
The Olin courses cover such broad topics as financial decision making, innovation, marketing and sales, strategy, managing people and human resources.
For information about the Olin School of Business and the Olin Partners program, see:
http://www.msci.org/partners.aspx
To register and learn about the MSCI discount, speak with Ann Zastrow, MSCI vice president, education, at 847-485-3012, or azastrow@msci.org.
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IN MEMORIAM
Longtime Industry Figure Carl Liebovich Dies (Top)
Carl V. Liebovich, who founded Liebovich Steel in Rockford, Illinois in 1939, died on Saturday. He was 88, and died a few days before celebrating his 66th wedding anniversary with his wife, the former Nelle Cassioppi.
Liebovich Steel, initially a scrap business, built its first warehouse in 1951 and began offering fabricated metal products in 1958. The company provided fabricated structural steel for 22 Chicago high-rise buildings, and for hangars at O’Hare International Airport to house United Airlines 747 aircraft.
Mr. Liebovich, who was joined in the business by his two brothers in the mid-1940s, transferred ownership to the sons of the next generation in 1981 but maintained a working office at the company. Now known as Liebovich Steel & Aluminum, the company, with four branches, is owned by Reliance Steel & Aluminum.
Mr. Liebovich, who holds the MSCI President’s Award for lifetime achievement, was a member and/or officer of numerous civic and business groups, including Ohave Shalom Synagogue, the West End Businessmen’s Association, the board of Swedish American Health Systems, Philip Behr Jewish Community Center, and Mauh-Nah-Tee-See Country Club. An avid golfer, he scored eight holes in one and held the Ingersoll Golf Course record score for eight years with a 64.
The funeral and burial were held earlier this week. Donations may be made to the American Cancer Society or to the Alzheimer’s Association, 4777 E. State Street, Rockford, IL 61108.
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BRIEFINGS
Items of Interest to MSCI Members (Top)
THE U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE has gathered information about various Katrina relief efforts, including a small business relief fund established by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, requests for consumer goods from the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, transportation assistance provided by UPS, and more. For more information, see the chamber’s web site at www.uschamber.com, and look for the link to its Center for Corporate Citizenship.
THE NUMBER OF H.R. 1498 CO-SPONSORS has risen to 121 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. H.R. 1498, sponsored by Duncan Hunter, R-California, and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, directly addresses the issue of Asian currency manipulation and provides legal, WTO-compliant remedies. MSCI continues to advocate passage of this legislation.
STEEL SERVICES, Inc. of Richmond, Virginia, has rejoined MSCI as an Active member. The key contact at the company is Garland M. Harwood, director of marketing. Welcome back!
JERRY SPRINGER, HOST OF the tumultuous television talk show, will be the speaker at the Northern Ohio Chapter’s Economic Night dinner on Thursday, September 29. A graduate of the Northwestern University law school, he served five terms in the Cincinnati City Council and was elected the city’s mayor in 1977. He worked as a political reporter, commentator and news anchor at the NBC affiliate in Cincinnati for 10 years, and launched his television talk show in 1991. For more information about Economic Night, talk with Teresa Zingale at 330-908-1586 (teresa@247officeexpress.com), or see: http://www.msci.org/EventCalendar/details.aspx?EventID=242&cat=20
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The Metals Service Center Institute, Rolling Meadows, Illinois, provides 'News from MSCI' as a service to its members. Please see the MSCI web site at www.msci.org for more information about the Institute, its programs and its members. Comments, suggestions, and contributions are welcome. Please submit them to news@msci.org, or fax them to 847-827-7155, Attn: Steve Weiner.
