Steel and elevator company ThyssenKrupp AG says its board chairman is stepping down.

Seventy-year-old Gerhard Cromme will leave his post at the end of the month. He said Friday he was quitting to "support a renewal" of the company's top management.

The company lost (EURO)5 billion ($6.5 billion) last year after taking a huge write-down on its Steel Americas division. It was fined last year for colluding with competitors over railway track orders. Three top managers were removed in December. Last month, antitrust investigators raided its Duisburg office in a probe over steel supplies to the auto industry.

Cromme, the company's former CEO, has been a prominent member of the German business community for years and chaired the committee that wrote the country's corporate governance code.