USA: USG has announced that its chairman, William C Foote, will retire from the company on 1 December 2011. The USG board of directors has elected James S Metcalf, USG's President and Chief Executive Officer, to the additional post of Chairman of the Board effective upon Foote's retirement.
"It has been an honour and a privilege to lead this great company for the last 15 years," said Foote. "I have great confidence in the company's leadership team and its future. I will sincerely miss the many friendships I have developed throughout the company and the industry over the years. I will always be grateful to our board of directors for their steadfast support and wise counsel."
Foote has served as USG's chairman since 1996, after having been elected chief executive officer in 1995 and president in 1994. Foote has nearly 27 years of service, having joined USG in 1984. The youngest chairman in USG's 109-year history, Foote successfully led the company through periods of rapid growth, severe economic contraction and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy related to legacy legal liabilities.
Under Foote's leadership, USG launched a large-scale modernisation of its manufacturing operations in the late 1990s that added more than 1.5Bnm2 of low-cost wallboard manufacturing capacity. Foote also directed the expansion of USG's specialty distribution business, L&W Supply Corporation, which now has more than 150 locations and is the only specialty dealer of building materials with a nationwide presence.
He also helmed the firm through the company's legacy asbestos liabilities and led the company through a Chapter 11 restructuring to protect shareholders from a wave of lawsuits. In a Wall Street Journal article at the time USG emerged from bankruptcy, Warren Buffet called it, "the most successful managerial performance in bankruptcy that I've ever seen." Buffett's investment company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., owns a 16.2% in USG.
Metcalf, who joined the company in 1980 as a trainee, was elected to the USG Board of Directors in 2008 and became chief executive officer on 1 January 2011. Foote remains chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
