U.S. Steel to sell plants

A century after J.P. Morgan welded together iron and coal mines, railroads and mills into the world’s first billion-dollar company, U.S. Steel is reversing course and selling off some of its holdings for $500 million to focus on making steel.

The company signed a letter of intent to sell its coke plants in Clairton, Pa., pictured above, and Gary, Ind., its Minnesota iron ore operations and its transportation subsidiary Transtar to a new company formed by Apollo Management, a New York private equity firm.

U.S. Steel would keep a 20 percent stake in the new company, which would supply the nation’s largest steelmaker with raw materials. The businesses in the sale employ about a quarter of the company’s 21,000 U.S. employees; U.S. Steel has about 37,000 employees worldwide.

Financial Services

Lawrence Bank to merge

Lawrence Bank hopes to merge with a Kansas City, Kan., bank but area customers and employees should notice little difference if the deal is approved by federal officials, bank president Terry Sutcliffe said.

Lawrence Bank has filed an application with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to merge with the First State Bank of Kansas City, Kan. The two banks already are owned by the same bank holding company, First Bancshares Inc., of Kansas City Kan.

Sutcliffe said the merger’s aim was to reduce the amount of paperwork the two banks have to file with federal and state regulatory officials. He said the merger would not result in either bank changing their names or reducing employee levels.

Lawrence Bank currently operates two offices in Lawrence, one at 3500 Clinton Parkway and another at 110 E. Ninth St. Sutcliffe said both locations would remain open after the merger.

Wichita

Airline cuts link to KCI

US Airways Express says it will stop flying from Wichita to Kansas City, Mo., on Nov. 3, leaving the two cities without a direct air connection.

Air Midwest, which operates the commuter airline, had already cut the number of daily flights on the route from five to three.

The Wichita-to-Kansas City route used to be a big market for Air Midwest, said Jonathan Ornstein, chairman and chief executive of Mesa Air Group, the airline’s parent company. Air Midwest has operated the service using Beech 1900D 19-seat aircraft for more than 20 years. But recently the airline has been losing more than $50,000 a month on the service, Ornstein said.

Sprint Corp.

Fraud claims dismissed

Most of the securities fraud claims in three shareholder lawsuits filed against Sprint Corp. over the failed merger with WorldCom Inc. have been dismissed.

The lawsuits were consolidated in the court of U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia. In a 55-page opinion, Murguia ruled that statements Sprint made prior to April 2000 expressing optimism about the merger were “predictive” and that “an investor could easily have recognized the statements as mere puffing.”

Murguia said the suits did not allege “any secret or otherwise unknown information,” which if released would have significantly altered the mix of information publicly available.