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CLEVELAND – Troubled steel producer LTV Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection Friday but reached a stopgap financing deal that averted an outright shutdown. 

Blaming unfairly priced imports for driving steel prices to 20-year lows, the company said it got an infusion of cash from Chase Manhattan Corp. to avoid laying off all of its 18,000 employees. 

“We have been able to reach an agreement with Chase whereby we will not be closing any facilities. We will be continuing operations until we work out a more formal financial arrangement,” LTV chairman William Bricker said. 

Bricker spoke after an hour-long meeting with Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White and U.S. Reps. Dennis Kucinich and Stephanie Tubbs-Jones. 

At the same time, LTV lawyers were wheeling six boxes of documents into federal court in Youngstown to file for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. 

The New York Stock Exchange halted trading of LTV stock on Thursday at 34.4 cents a share after the company warned that it was considering filing for protection from creditors. 

The filing would give LTV a second chance to reorganize its finances. LTV emerged in 1993 from seven years of U.S. Bankruptcy Court protection. 

The Cleveland-based LTV has 18,000 employees and hasn’t turned a profit since 1997. 

Like many other steelmakers nationwide, LTV has struggled recently, posting a loss of $80 million in its third quarter. The company previously announced it would eliminate 26 percent of its jobs, or 3,400 positions, over three years. 

Bricker had said Thursday in a letter to city officials that LTV had expected to secure $225 million in loans from Chase in order to prevent shutdowns, but that the bank had backed out. On Friday, Bricker did not say why the bank decided to go ahead with a deal after all. Chase officials also declined to comment. 

Market conditions for Ohio’s steel producers have weakened considerably since midyear because of falling prices, record imports and weakening demand, according to the Ohio Steel Council, a trade group. 

Kucinich, a Democrat whose district includes LTV’s Cleveland mills, planned to appear with other company supporters in federal court. 

“I think it’s important that everyone in the political and civic and financial community is aware of LTV’s situation, and I’m certainly contacting everyone I know to try to try to be of help to LTV,” he said. 

On Thursday, the U.S. International Trade Commission decided Thursday there was evidence that the nation’s steel industry has been “materially injured” by subsidized and underpriced imports. The commission is considering whether to impose additional duties on imports from Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakstan, the Netherlands, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine.