FirstEnergy CEO Anthony Alexander is stepping down from his position the first of the year to assume a newly created position as executive chairman of the company. He stresses that he will work in an advisory role to the new CEO Charles "Chuck" Jones.
View full sizeAnthony Alexander View full sizeCharles JonesAKRON, Ohio -- FirstEnergy Chief Executive Officer Anthony Alexander will leave his position on Jan. 1 to serve as "executive chairman" of the company and continue as a member of the board of directors.
He will be succeeded by Charles Jones, the company said, following a vote Tuesday by the company's board of directors.
"It's the end of an era," said Paul Patterson, an analyst with GlenRock Associates in New York City. "It's hard to see any replacement for Tony not being significantly different."
Jones was one of at least two internal candidates and an unspecified number of candidates from outside the company. When asked whether the board of directors vote was unanimous, spokesman Todd Schneider said the company does not release such information.
Alexander, 63, was elected CEO in 2004, upon the death of Chief Executive H. Peter Burg. Alexander began his career with the company in 1972, as an employee in Ohio Edison's tax department.
In an interview, Alexander said he and the board began the process of looking for his successor in 2012 when he signaled he wanted to retire at some point.
"The process starts many years in advance, as you begin to identify the institutional talent," he said, "to make sure that as the CEO prepares to retire you have candidates internally able to run the ship.
"And frankly, you want to make sure the company is in that position. Disasters happen. It happened to this company before," he said, referring to the death of Burg after a brief illness.
Jones, 59, began his career with the company in 1978 as a substation engineer with Ohio Edison, which merged with Centerior Energy in 1997 to form FirstEnergy. Centerior had been created by the merger of the Illuminating Co. and Toledo Edison.
Both are University of Akron graduates but in widely separate fields, Alexander has a bachelor of science in accounting and law degree from the university, while Jones earned a bachelor of science in electrical engineering and also attended the United States Naval Academy.
The board's choosing Jones parallels the company's turning away from its role as a competitive power-generating company and a return to its roots as a company trying to behave as much as possible as if it were regulated.
Since 2010, Jones has managed FirstEnergy's 10 regulated-distribution companies, including the Illuminating Co., Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison in Ohio.
Though most of the company's many critics will see the change at the top as a sign that the company may change its stance on regulatory issues, Jones sought to tamp down that idea.
"Maybe I come more from an operations history," said Jones in a joint interview with Alexander. "I don't think that means I am going to operate the company significantly differently than Tony.
Then, noting that the corporation still operates the competitive FirstEnergy Solutions, as well as the traditional local utilities, Jones added, "I think Tony has been very committed to the competitive-generation business and we have had some tough decisions that we had to make there. But we will remain committed to that part of the business."
The company earlier this year announced a major retreat from is aggressive role as a competitive, or merchant, power company, no longer offering retail contracts to most customer classes and saying that when its current retail contracts with consumers and smaller commercial clients expire, it would not renew them.
When asked whether there was one position he wished he had had in the company over his decades of service that might help him now, Jones confessed it would have been in finance.
"I am an engineer by training. And if there is a part of the company that I am not as technically competent in, it's the financial side," he said candidly.
"But I have been president of utility operations for several years. And when you are running a major piece of a company, you learn the financial side.
"Having a stronger technical understanding of the finances would be a plus, but I don't see it as a necessity," he added.
Alexander, serving in the newly created position as executive chairman of the company, said he will be in an advisory role. "But Chuck is running the company," he said.