In October 2001, I questioned in this space whether Bethlehem Steel Corp. would be the first great turnaround of the 21st century. A week earlier, Bethlehem Steel had filed Chapter 11, becoming another of the great American corporate names to slide into that legal netherworld known as bankruptcy reorganization.

Now, roughly 18 months later, Bethlehem Steel Corp. is no more. In U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York last month, Judge Burton Lifland approved the sale of the assets of what had been one of the largest steel producers in the world, to an investor group led by Wilbur Ross, a leading investor in restructured companies. Some - but not all - of the once-proud facilities of Bethlehem Steel Corp., a company that could trace its roots back before the Civil War, became part of International Steel. Bethlehem Steel Corp. stock certificates are now worthless souvenirs, and the unsecured creditors will likely get a few cents on the dollar.

I am a turnaround professional who also has spent more than a decade in the steel industry. What went wrong at Bethlehem? For years I have watched the domestic steel industry struggle against competitors playing by different rules or, at the very least, operating in tacit partnership with their respective governments. U.S. producers have been beset on all sides by comparatively disadvantageous regulations, powerful unions, and a Wall Street that had forgotten the glory days of the steel industry of the past, and looked only for the next quarterly dividend.

The end of Bethlehem Steel can actually be traced to the decades following World War II, when demolished foreign producers were rebuilt as state-of-the-art facilities situated on deep-water ports. From the outset, these producers were built with exports in mind, and their sights were trained on the fat American market with its huge demand. Following the landmark Steelworkers strike in the 1950s, American steel users such as the automobile manufacturers were forced to buy foreign steel, which within a short time became of comparable, and in some cases, superior quality. Steel became an international commodity, and except for a few dalliances with the temporary protection of tariffs and other schemes (one of which we are currently observing), the U.S. industry was left to duke it out in free and open markets.

As the political winds shifted toward rebuilt foreign steel mills with lower costs of labor and capital, protected domestic markets and looser regulations, American steel-makers like Bethlehem couldn't react quickly enough. Some two dozen American steelmakers have now gone bankrupt since 1998.

Not that many years ago, no one talked about turnaround management or corporate renewal. A suggestion that any major American company might ever fail would have been greeted with disbelief, if not derision. True, the landmark failure of the Penn Central Railroad in the early 1970s shocked America with the realization that an erstwhile pillar of the economy could actually fail, but that was still just a railroad, a heavily regulated vestige of the 1800s. No multibillion-dollar company - let alone an industry leader - could ever fail!

Fast-forward to the present: Business bankruptcies are at an all-time high. The benumbing failures of Enron, Global Crossing, Kmart, several major airlines, and many other once-prominent companies. Here's the real upheaval in our economy: virtually every company, regardless of its size or dominance, will likely go through one or more periods of serious jeopardy during its business lifetime. It is possible that every business will need a turnaround effort or bankruptcy reorganization at some point if it is to survive, and many will not.

Can the former assets of Bethlehem Steel make it as International Steel? Stripped of the "legacy" pension and other liabilities, equipped with a restructured union contract, able to pick and choose among Bethlehem Steel's former deals with vendors - perhaps. The tariff protection provided by the Bush administration won't hurt, for as long as it lasts. But in the long term, International Steel will have to justify its economic existence in the same world market as Bethlehem Steel did. Bankruptcy gives a fresh start, but doesn't ultimately change the rules of the game.

Like it or not, corporate renewal has been here to stay for quite some time. And as with the floor of the Amazon jungle, the process of renewal involves organic change. Great corporate names will come and go. No company is immune. The phoenix that rises from the ashes may resemble a poodle that has been to the barber - recognizable, but with a very different appearance.