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(Reuters) -Activist investor Ancora has nominated nine candidates to U.S. Steel's board of directors, as it looks to oust company CEO David Burritt and push the American steelmaker to back out of a $14.9 billion merger deal with Japan's Nippon Steel.
The activist investor, which owns a 0.18% stake in the company, on Monday proposed to replace top boss Burritt with Alan Kestenbaum, former CEO of Canada's Stelco that was acquired by Cleveland-Cliffs in a $2.8 billion deal last year.
Cliffs in 2023 had proposed to acquire U.S. Steel, but the Pittsburgh steelmaker raised concerns about antitrust issues, while it accepted a higher offer from Nippon Steel soon after.
"We are...concerned about the motivations behind these nominations, given Ancora's and Alan Kestenbaum's recent dealings with failed bidder Cleveland-Cliffs," U.S. Steel said in a statement on Monday.
Ancora has nominated nine candidates to U.S. Steel's board, which has a total of 12 members.
Reuters reported earlier this month that Cleveland-Cliffs was partnering with Nucor for a new all-cash bid for U.S. Steel after former U.S. President Joe Biden blocked Nippon Steel's bid on national security grounds and delayed an order for Nippon to abandon its pursuit of U.S. Steel until June.
U.S. Steel and Nippon have sued the Biden administration and want a federal appeals court to overturn his decision, so they can secure a national security review.
Nippon remains interested in working with the Donald Trump administration to try to seal the takeover, vice chairman Takahiro Mori had said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
Ancora said on Monday it was not interested in the sale of U.S. Steel to another party, including Cleveland-Cliffs and instead wants to pursue $565 million in breakup fee from Nippon Steel.
Shares of U.S. Steel were down 1.6% in premarket trading.
(Reporting by Aishwarya Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala, Varun H K and Shinjini Ganguli)