Cleveland-Cliffs adds board member

Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. has appointed Jane M. Cronin, senior vice president with paint and coatings company The Sherwin-Williams Co., to its board of directors effective immediately. Both Cliffs and Sherwin-Williams are based in Cleveland.

According to Cliffs, Cronin is senior vice president of finance with Sherwin-Williams. She started her tenure with that firm in 1989 and subsequently has accepted “roles of increasing responsibility,” the firm says.

“I am pleased to announce the addition of Jane Cronin, a very accomplished and talented professional, to the Cleveland-Cliffs board,” Cliffs Chairman, President and CEO Lourenco Goncalves says.

“Jane’s longstanding experience with accounting and financial matters at a prominent public manufacturing company in Cleveland will enable her to provide valuable insight in her role on the Cliffs’ board and as a member of the audit committee. We look forward to the expertise and local Cleveland connection Jane will bring to the board as we move into 2025.”

Cronin fills a board seat left vacant by the death of former board member Janet Miller, a corporate and health care sector attorney who died in July 2024.

Cleveland-Cliffs is a vertically integrated iron mining, direct-reduced iron (DRI) making, steel recycling, steel production and downstream steel finishing, stamping, tooling and tubing plant operator.

As the company enters 2025, it may reemerge as a bidder for assets of the Pittsburgh-based United States Steel Corp. A competing bid for U.S. Steel from Japanese company Nippon Steel Corp. was rejected not by the company’s shareholders but by outgoing President Joe Biden.

In mid-2023, before U.S. Steel’s management accepted the Nippon Steel bid, Cleveland-Cliffs made a competing proposal to acquire U.S. Steel.

A Cliffs-U.S. Steel merger without conditions would place all operating blast furnaces in the U.S. in the hands of the newly combined company.

In 2024, Cliffs also acquired blast furnace capacity in Canada with its acquisition of Stelco Holdings in that nation.