(Bloomberg) -- Steelmaker Usiminas said a Brazilian court annulled the board's recent appointment of the company's chief executive officer, signaling a return to the helm of his predecessor.
In the latest twist of a protracted shareholder dispute, a Minas Gerais state court granted a request by Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. to reverse the May 25 board decisions, including the appointment of Sergio Leite as CEO, and ordered the reinstatement of previous management, Usiminas said in a filing Wednesday.
Nippon Steel and Techint Group have been engaged in a years-long feud over how to run the Belo Horizonte-based company, with Nippon directors voting against Leite to replace Romel de Souza and fighting the decision for allegedly violating the shareholders' pact.
After agreeing to run Usiminas jointly in 2012, a row between the two controllers emerged in 2014 when CEO Julian Eguren and two other Techint-backed officials were pushed out. The dispute intensified earlier this year as the two companies feuded over how to contend with slumping demand and the merits of a debt-restructuring arrangement that was conditioned on a 1 billion-real ($309 million) capital increase.
The company is known formally as Usinas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais SA.
To contact the reporter on this story: R.T. Watson in Rio de Janeiro at rwatson71@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Attwood at jattwood3@bloomberg.net, Steven Frank
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