Skip to content

Golden parachute for Cliffs boss

Gary Halverson’s time as president and CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources was short but sweet; extremely sweet. The Sudbury native, who was recently ousted as Cliffs boss, will receive $11 million in termination pay by the Ohio iron and coal miner.
Gary_Halverson_cropped
Gary Halverson’s time as president and CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources was short but sweet; extremely sweet.

Gary Halverson’s time as president and CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources was short but sweet; extremely sweet.

The Sudbury native, who was recently ousted as Cliffs boss, will receive $11 million in termination pay by the Ohio iron and coal miner.

Halverson was appointed the company’s chief operating officer last November 18 and then bumped up to president and chief executive officer on Feb. 13. He replaced Joseph Carrabba, who retired in November.

But Halverson was sacked in early August after Casablanca Capital, a New York hedge fund, won a boardroom proxy fight with the mandate to drop all of the company’s unprofitable and costly international mining assets, including its Bloom Lake iron mine in Quebec.

Casablanca installed their candidate of choice, Lourenco Goncalves, as president and chairman of the board on Aug. 7.

Cliffs has made no statement on the future of its Ring of Fire chromite deposits in the James Bay region. The company suspended all exploration work at its advanced stage Black Thor project last fall.