SHOWTIME One-on-one with No. 1 at World Steel Dynamics

Jul 01, 2007 | 11:15 AM |

From the outside, 456 Sylvan Ave. doesn't look much different than any other two-story, commercial brick building flanking one of the thoroughfares weaving its way through the leafy green suburbs of Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

It's not until you pull into the parking lot and get a closer look at the license plate on the rear bumper of a black Ford F-150 pickup truck parked in slot No. 1 that you begin to get the idea that 456 has something very special going on under its roof. The license plate—4STEEEL (sic)—is an understatement.

Follow the stairs up to the second floor and there's no hiding the fact that steel is central to the business at hand in the suite of offices and conference rooms. Framed photos and paintings of blast furnaces, hot-strip mills, steel coils and girders line the walls. And in an unexpected tour de force, a trio of carefully cut-and-polished electrodes double as end tables in the reception area.

Welcome to the offices of World Steel Dynamics Inc. (WSD) and home away from home of Peter F. Marcus, who in early 1999, together with staffers and associates at PaineWebber Inc., formed their own separate and independent company. And they've been going strong ever since.

On this particular morning, Marcus is busy putting some finishing touches to Steel Success XXII, the 22nd edition of an annual conference cosponsored by AMM that over the years has evolved into the global steel industry's biggest name, premiere information-gathering and networking event.....