What is the answer to European steel sector's 'deep-rooted' problems?

Steel has been a prominent fixture in the news in recent weeks but for all the wrong reasons, writes Canada Life Investment's Duncan Mackay.

As the UK's loss-making steel industry searches for a future amid plant closures and redundancy announcements, similar pressures are being felt in Europe and around the world as weak demand, overcapacity and low prices take their toll. The problems for the European steel sector are deep rooted. At best it has a history of cyclicality and volatile earnings. At worst, it is dismissed by investors as a sector in structural decline as the digital age, new materials, and asset-light business models gain prominence. Up until 2014, the Chinese government adopted a rapid industrialisation mod...