Who is FirstEnergy's new CEO and what are his plans to move past HB 6 bribery scandal?

FirstEnergy Corp.’s newest leader is the first to come from outside the company, but he’s no stranger to the electric utility industry.

Brian X. Tierney, 55, began his new tenure as FirstEnergy’s president and chief executive officer on June 1.

Tierney joins FirstEnergy from Blackstone Inc., where he served as the global head of portfolio operations and asset management for the infrastructure group.

Before joining Blackstone, one of the largest institutional shareholders in FirstEnergy, Tierney spent 23 years at another Ohio-based electric utility, American Electric Power Co. Inc. (AEP). There, he held a number of leadership positions, including executive vice president of strategy after serving more than 11 years as its chief financial officer.

Moving beyond 'corporate trauma'

Tierney comes to the Akron-based FirstEnergy after a tumultuous period tied to the company's involvement in the House Bill 6 bribery scandal. The public corruption case led to the conviction and sentencing this year of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and Matt Borges, former chair of the Ohio Republican Party.

The scandal involved $61 million in bribe money paid by FirstEnergy via dark money groups to help Householder seize political power and, in turn, pass and defend the HB 6 bailout law. The law provided a $1.3 billion bailout of struggling nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy's former subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions, to be paid for by Ohio utility customers.

FirstEnergy fired Chuck Jones as its chief executive officer and named company veteran Steven Strah as a replacement shortly after two of the men charged in the bribery investigation pleaded guilty.

Strah retired abruptly in late 2022 and was replaced by interim President and CEO John Somerhalder II, who had been board of directors chair and was an executive director between March 2021 and May 2022.

In March, the board named Tierney as the next CEO. Tierney said that although he worked for shareholder Blackstone at the time of his appointment, the process of naming him CEO was separate and the Blackstone representative on the FirstEnergy board of directors recused himself from the vote.

Tierney said the company went through a business transaction as it transitioned from being a hybrid utility with competitive operations and regulated operations to one that is “entirely focused on regulated operations.”

“But we've also been through a corporate trauma, and I think the company has done a good job taking responsibility for what happened, entering into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice, owning up to what happened, taking steps to ensure that that doesn't happen again, making changes in management, making additions to management and making sure that something like that never happens here again,” said Tierney. “So that allows us now to focus on the future and put that past behind us.”

FirstEnergy is still committed to Akron

Tierney also comes to lead a company that recently announced it would be leaving its downtown Akron headquarters. The utility, which had signed a 10-year lease for the headquarters, is exercising its right to buy the building, allowing it to end the lease and move. Over the next two years, it plans to move its headquarters to its West Akron campus.

The decision came as FirstEnergy is developing plans to transition from four corporate buildings in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, company spokeswoman Jennifer Young said in May.

The workforce has changed after the COVID-19 pandemic, said Young. Of the approximately 925 employees who report to FirstEnergy's Akron downtown office facility, 90% are now designated as mobile.

Tierney, who was not CEO when the decision was made, said the move was made for the future of the company.

"It's not where you do the work anymore,” he said while sitting in an office at the West Akron campus during a recent interview. “A lot of our employees are still working remotely. It's making sure that the work gets done.

“We're moving out of an office building in downtown Akron to another building in Akron, and our commitment to the community is as strong as it's ever been,” said Tierney.

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The utility currently has 12,000 employees in its 10 distribution companies in five states.

Tierney will be working out of two offices he’s establishing at the West Akron and downtown Akron buildings. He has no plans to establish an office elsewhere in the company’s territory, though Tierney said he will spend a lot of time in all parts of the utility’s service territory.

Tierney and his wife, who have four grown daughters, last week signed a contract to purchase a house in Akron. He lived in New York and Columbus.

“I'm sending a message by doing that,” Tierney said. “I want people to know that I want to be here. I'm going to be spending my time here. I'm going to be involved in the community; and it seems to me to be a great community to be involved in.”

In Columbus, Tierney said he and his wife were very involved with nonprofit boards and civic activities. Two areas of particular interest for the couple are issues related to hunger and food and education, he said.

Tierney is familiar with FirstEnergy

Although Tierney is new to FirstEnergy, he said he’s familiar with the utility.

“This is a company that I've watched for a number of years. So even though I didn't grow up in the system here, I've watched the company for the 25 years I've been in the industry,” he said. “I've watched them evolve over that time, and as part of what we (Blackstone) did in the investment of FirstEnergy, got to know the company even better.

“And then as I started considering, is this something that I want to pursue as a career opportunity, a leadership opportunity, I studied the company even more. So it's a company I'm very, very familiar with, after having watched it grow and evolve with the last quarter of a century.”

Headquarters moving: FirstEnergy to move out of downtown Akron, consolidate corporate offices in West Akron

Tierney said his priority is “focusing on the future.”

“One of the things that drew me back into the industry was the fact that we provide the lifeblood to our communities. I love working with utility employees who feel that vocation and commitment to the service that we provide, and the opportunity we have here is absolutely fantastic,” he said. “It's to invest, to improve the customer experience, reliability, the energy transition, and improve people's lives by doing that.”

Asked if the board of directors has set any priorities for him, Tierney said he’s been asked to look at the company’s investment plans and growth opportunities.

“We’re going to grow earnings. We're going to improve the customer experience. We're going to improve reliability operations. All those things are plans and goals and metrics that we've laid out, that we're going to focus on as a management team and employees.”

Tierney said he does not have a set-length contract with the company and is “an employee at will.”

FirstEnergy is not looking to be sold, CEO says

The company is “as healthy as it's ever been at any time that I've seen in the last 25 years,” said Tierney. “They don't have one foot in deregulated, competitive and one foot and regulated. They are entirely focused on the regulated properties that we have.”

The board and management have entered into several transactions before Tierney arrived “to shore up the finances of the company to improve the balance sheet to make sure that we have the money to invest in our utility properties going forward for the benefit of our customers.”

Tierney said he understands there are often questions about whether FirstEnergy would be sold, but that is not on his plate.

“The board would not have selected me if their plan was to sell the company, because I don't have any experience doing that. I don't think I'd be good at that. It's not my thing,” he said. “The thing that I am good at is improving a company's operational and financial performance. And that's what they hired me to do here. So I’m very much committed to the company, to not selling it, to focusing on improving it in the short, middle and long term. And part of that is being here in Akron and being committed to northern Ohio and the communities that we serve.”

Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Who is FirstEnergy's new CEO and what are plans to move past scandal?