Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. Names P. Kelly Tompkins Executive Vice President – Legal, Government Affairs and Sustainability

Regulatory News:

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. (NYSE:CLF) (Paris:CLF) today announced the appointment of P. Kelly Tompkins as executive vice president – legal, government affairs and sustainability. In this newly created role, Tompkins will report directly to Joseph A. Carrabba, Cliffs’ chairman, president and chief executive officer. He will have responsibility for all traditional corporate general counsel matters, Cliffs’ ongoing relationships with all U.S. and international government and regulatory bodies, and the execution and reporting of the Company’s increasingly critical sustainable development practices. Mr. Tompkins will officially join Cliffs on May 3, 2010.

Since 2008, Tompkins has served as executive vice president and chief financial officer for RPM International Inc. (NYSE: RPM), a $3.4 billion, specialty coatings and sealants manufacturer. In this role, he was responsible for worldwide finance, accounting, tax, treasury, internal audit, government affairs, investor relations and risk management. Prior to this position, Mr. Tompkins was RPM’s chief administrative officer, responsible for all of RPM’s financial, traditional corporate general counsel matters and communication functions, including investor relations.

Mr. Carrabba said: "Our Board and executive team are extremely enthusiastic about Kelly joining the Company. Attracting a proven, senior-level executive with such a vast background and broad experience base is a testament to Cliffs’ rising corporate profile and the Company’s future prospects. I believe Kelly’s leadership will prove invaluable as we continue to execute our strategy and grow as an international mining and natural resources company. In recent years, Cliffs has become an increasingly more complex and integrated global company. This requires that we build the sophisticated business processes and systems needed to support our next phase of growth. Kelly’s expertise and leadership will help us achieve this goal.”

Before joining RPM in 1996, Mr. Tompkins held various positions with Reliance Electric Company (a $1.5 billion NYSE-listed diversified manufacturing company) and Exxon Corporation.

Tompkins serves on the boards of University Hospitals Case Medical Center; the Alzheimer’s Association of Cleveland; the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s Government Affairs Council and Magnificat High School, an all-girls college preparatory school. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canada-United States Law Institute of Case Western Reserve University and the Advisory Council for the Baldwin-Wallace College of Business. He served as the 95th president of the Cleveland Bar Association in 2005-2006. He is a past recipient of the George B. Davis Award for his distinguished service to Cleveland State University and has received Outstanding Alumnus Awards from Cleveland-Marshall Law School (2008) and from Mercyhurst College (2009). He earned an industry achievement award in October 2003 from the National Paint & Coatings Association.

Mr. Tompkins received his B.A. degree from Mercyhurst College and his J.D. degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1981.

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ABOUT CLIFFS NATURAL RESOURCES INC.

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. is an international mining and natural resources company. A member of the S&P 500 Index, we are the largest producer of iron ore pellets in North America, a major supplier of direct-shipping lump and fines iron ore out of Australia and a significant producer of metallurgical coal. With core values of environmental and capital stewardship, our colleagues across the globe endeavor to provide all stakeholders operating and financial transparency as embodied in the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. Our Company is organized through three geographic business units:

The North American business unit is comprised of six iron ore mines owned or managed in Michigan, Minnesota and Canada and two coking coal mining complexes located in West Virginia and Alabama. The Asia Pacific business unit is comprised of two iron ore mining complexes in Western Australia and a 45% economic interest in a coking and thermal coal mine in Queensland, Australia. The Latin America business unit includes a 30% interest in the Amapá Project, an iron ore project in the state of Amapá in Brazil.

Other projects under development include a biomass production plant in Michigan and Ring of Fire chromite properties in Ontario, Canada. Over recent years, Cliffs has been executing a strategy designed to achieve scale in the mining industry and focused on serving the world's largest and fastest growing steel markets.

News releases and other information on the Company are available on the Internet at:

http://www.cliffsnaturalresources.com or

www.cliffsnaturalresources.com/Investors/Pages/default.aspx?b=1041&1=1.

Follow Cliffs on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/CliffsIR.

SOURCE: Cliffs Natural Resources Inc.