Nippon Steel Corp confirmed that it has no immediate plans to increase its 5% holding in POSCO. Nippon Steel said in a March 8th 2007 statement to South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service that it had 4.36 million shares in POSCO as of March 2nd 2007.

Mr Akio Mimura president of Nippon in an interview after attending a board meeting of the International Iron & Steel Institute in New Delhi said “We don't have any concrete plans to increase our stake' in POSCO. We already have an alliance. Mr Lee and I are eager to enlarge deals that give both parties merits in terms of profit an increase in production capacity and technology.''

Nippon and POSCO on October 20th 2007 said that they would spend more than USD 900 million to increase stakes in each other to deter bids amid industry consolidation.

The Korea Economic Daily citing an unidentified POSCO executive has earlier reported that POSCO would increase the friendly stakes to 50% by the end of the year as Arcelor Mittal had made it a takeover target. Ms Ko Min Jin a spokeswoman for POSCO informed on March 16th 2007 that 41% of its shares are owned by friendly investors.

However, Mr LN Mittal president & CEO of Arcelor Mittal said on March 24th 2007 that he was not aware' of takeover talks with POSCO and dismissed media reports as rumors.