The dress code at Koppers Inc.'s Downtown headquarters has been business casual for nearly a decade.

V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette Walter W. Turner, president and CEO of Koppers, in a conference room at the company's headquarters, Downtown. Click photo for larger image. Walter W. Turner • Job: President and chief executive officer, Koppers Inc. • Age: 59 • Hometown: Bedford, Bedford County; now resides in Canonsburg • Education: Bachelor's, business administration, Glenville State College, 1969. • Career: 1969: production assistant, Koppers; 1969-71: U.S. Army, Fort Dix, N.J., and Vietnam; 1971-92: rejoined Koppers and held variety of positions in controller's department, marketing and sales; 1992-95: vice president and manager, marketing and development, industrial pitches and related products; 1995-98: vice president and general manager, carbon materials and chemicals; 1998-present: president and chief executive officer.

But you'll rarely find Walter W. Turner, 59, the president and chief executive officer, at work in anything other than a dress shirt and tie.

"I feel naked without a tie," said Mr. Turner, who launched his career at Koppers' predecessor, Koppers Co., right out of college in 1969 as an assistant in the controller's department.

Back then, Koppers was one of the city's prominent Fortune 500 companies, situated in its Art Deco skyscraper at Seventh Avenue and Grant Street where Koppers employees filled 34 floors as well as part of a neighboring building.

While Mr. Turner has worked nearly four decades in the same building, his company has undergone radical changes during those years. There was a tense takeover battle, a management-led private buyout of some business units, and last month a public stock offering of shares in the $1 billion entity that still carries the Koppers name.

"It's been a difficult transition" at times, he acknowledged.

Koppers Co. was founded by a German engineer, Heinrich Koppers, in 1907 and landed in Pittsburgh in 1915 when financier A.W. Mellon became its largest shareholder. Originally, it supplied coke ovens to steelmakers and later diversified into road building materials, chemicals, railroad and utility equipment and wood treatment products.

Mr. Turner was working as a marketing manager in 1988 when British investor Brian Beazer bought out the company in a hostile takeover for $1.8 billion. But the new owner was interested primarily in Koppers' road construction business and sold off the rest.

A management-led group that included Mr. Turner acquired two units: carbon materials and chemicals used in manufacturing processes including aluminum and steel; and treated wood products such as railroad ties and utility poles. The deal included the Koppers name and space in the elegant building that was erected for Koppers in the late 1920s.

After the highly leveraged buyout, the management group owned 34 percent of the new Koppers, Beazer owned 33 percent and Koppers Australia owned 33 percent. "Our No. 1 priority was generating cash to pay down debt," Mr. Turner recalled about the private company that emerged in 1989.

"It was a scary situation being part of a former $2 billion company and then spinning off into a small company. But after the first year, we realized our customers really supported us and we could make it a go."

It helped that the group retained the Koppers name and a home in the landmark headquarters with its polished brass mailboxes and marble balconies.

Koppers occupies five floors of the structure, which is now owned by a pension fund. Mr. Turner's office is on the 15th floor, where the old Koppers maintained its executive suite.

"The name is very key to us. Being headquartered here adds to the positive results. When visitors come to us in Pittsburgh, we're in the Koppers Building. We don't own it, but sometimes we think of it as ours."

Since its first year as a private company in 1989, Koppers has grown from $425 million in revenue to $1 billion last year, growing mainly through what Mr. Turner called "small acquisitions." It will release 2005 results next week. It has 2,000 employees at 20 locations in the United States and 15 in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. About 100 work Downtown, and 250 are at regional facilities in Harmarville, Clairton, Monessen and Follansbee, W.Va.

About 35 percent of its revenues are generated offshore, and Mr. Turner expects Koppers' growth to come in Far East markets, particularly China, where it has one joint venture, is negotiating a second venture and has a third on the drawing board.

While it continues to focus on strong markets such as carbons and chemicals for global aluminum manufacturing and wood treatments for North American railroad ties, Koppers is looking to add what Mr. Turner called "a third leg for our company."

One possibility is a greater focus on carbon-related applications using K-foam, a new product with heat transfer properties that Koppers hopes to market to the defense, aerospace and automotive industries. K-foam is being tested for possible use in homeland security projects, Mr. Turner said.

Nine years after the original management buyout, New York-based investment firm Saratoga Partners became a majority investor in Koppers when the Australian owners and Hanson PLC, which had taken over Beazer, wanted out. Saratoga initially ended up with a 60 percent stake, and management held 40 percent.

Then, when the market for public offerings heated up last year, the owners decided to sell 10 million shares to raise $140 million. After the public offering on Feb. 1, Saratoga retained about 30 percent of the shares for itself, while the managers' had fractional ownership, the biggest chunk being a 1.4 percent stake held by Mr. Turner.

Koppers should be able to expand faster as a public company, said Mr. Turner, an early riser who typically gets to his office at 7 a.m. and starts the day talking with Koppers' European operations. Before he leaves 12 hours later, he checks in with the Asian and Australian facilities.

He concedes it is a long workday, but his favorite part of the job is "working with our global operations and working daily with different cultures."

To maintain face time with employees and customers around the world, Mr. Turner travels about 30 percent of the time and has a goal of visiting one-third of all Koppers plants each year.

When he's in Pittsburgh, he keeps "a very open-door policy."

"I'm easily accessible and really see decision making as fairly fast-paced vs. layers of structure."