According to Bloomberg.com, after a shareholder meeting of more than five hours, board member Marcelo Gasparino was elected chairman of the company known as Usiminas, according to a regulatory filing. Billionaire Lirio Parisotto was elected to the board to represent minority shareholders during the meeting at the company’s headquarters in Belo Horizonte in Brazil’s southeast.

The conflict between Nippon Steel and Techint blew into the open last year as the two major shareholders fought over company management as steel demand slumped and the shares plunged. Last September, Chief Executive Officer Julian Eguren and two other Techint-appointed officials were pushed out.

“We are going to work for both controllers to reach a consensus,” Parisotto, 61, said in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo after the meeting. “Our objective is get there and try to establish some peace.”

Parisotto was put up as director by minority shareholders after his Geracao L Par fund built a 5.2 percent stake in Usiminas preferred shares and 1 percent of voting stock.

The vote means the controlling shareholders lost out to the minority, which is unheard of, Marcelo Trindade, a lawyer representing Techint, said after the meeting.

“The lack of consensus between controllers stems from the fact that one of the controllers thinks it can do what it wants,” he said.

Nippon Steel believes Usiminas’s daily operations are going smoothly, the company said in an e-mailed statement in Tokyo after the shareholder vote.

“We intend to fulfill our responsibility to stabilize Usiminas’ operations and make the business grow under the new chairman,” the company said.

Techint has about 38 percent of voting shares in Usiminas through several units, while the Japanese group including some proxies hold about 31 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-07/usiminas-gets-new-chairman-in-latest-move-in-nippon-techint-spat