March 8 (Reuters) - Electric utility company FirstEnergy Corp on Monday named Steven Strah as its new chief, after a bribery scandal led to the ousting of former Chief Executive Officer Charles Jones and two other executives in October.
The Akron, Ohio-based utility had fired Jones over the payment of about $4 million to an entity associated with a person who subsequently became a utility regulator.
Strah, who was appointed as acting CEO in October, will assume office effective immediately, the company said.
The change at the top comes a month after FE said activist investor Carl Icahn was looking to buy a stake in the energy distributor.
Bloomberg reported https://bloom.bg/3qp2vfD on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Icahn is in discussions with FirstEnergy about potentially taking two seats on the board of the utility.
FirstEnergy and Icahn Enterprises did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for a comment on the Bloomberg report.
Last year, the power utility had received subpoenas in a $60 million bribery case stemming from a controversial bill to bail out the state's nuclear power plants. [https://reut.rs/38CeDnx ] (Reporting by Rithika Krishna and Radhika Anilkumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Rashmi Aich)
