America for Sale

Exploring the issue of foreign ownership of corporate America, a leading economist and the president of the steel producer, Esmark, revisit the sale of that company to a Russian firm.

Is it a good idea to allow foreigners to purchase critical and strategic American assets? No, say authors James Koch and Craig Bouchard. In America for Sale: How the Foreign Pack Circled and Devoured Esmark, Koch and Bouchard use the sale of Esmark—a transaction that put over 50 percent of American steel production into foreign hands—to make the case that this trend presents a clear and present danger to the economic future of United States of America.

America for Sale recaps the amazing, sometimes incredible events leading up to the sale of Esmark, including intense pressure from the United Steelworkers and the company's major public shareholder to make a decision not in the best interest of all shareholders. It also analyzes the efforts by the Esmark board of directors to observe its fiduciary duty, details the company's “poison pill” effort to raise its sales price, and describes the actions of Leo Gerard and Ron Bloom of the United Steelworkers Union—which led to some surprising alliances. The authors—one Esmark's president and vice chairman of the board, the other an Esmark director, preeminent American economist, and former university president—then provide their own assessment of the Esmark story. They offer legislative and policy prescriptions aimed at making sure U.S. business doesn't devolve into one big garage sale to foreigners seeking to take advantage of the coming decline of the U.S. dollar.

• Previously unseen documents relating to the hostile reverse tender merger of Esmark, a historic first in unseating the board of directors of a publicly traded company in the United States
• A chronology of the "America for Sale" phenomenon and of key events in the American steel industry, from the 1970s to 2009
• Approximately 25 tables and one dozen graphs that make it easy for readers to interpret data related to the Esmark sale and the overall foreign stake in American companies
• Text boxes that focus on human interest stories and the amazing quirks attached to the sale of Esmark—for example, one of the Russian bidders also was interested in acquiring the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team and preventing its star Russian hockey player from leaping from a team in the remote Ural mountains to the NHL; that star subsequently led the NHL in scoring in the 2009 NHL season

Craig T. Bouchard is the president of Esmark, Inc.

James V. Koch is board of visitors professor of economics and president emeritus at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA.