John Snow, the rail mogul expected to be tapped by the White House to slip into the driver's seat at treasury, has both Washington smarts and business savvy aplenty for the high-profile job.
President George W. Bush apparently feels the 63-year-old executive also has what his current treasury chief lacks -- the smoothness to sell a new economic stimulus plan to Capitol Hill lawmakers and the cool to keep Wall Street players calm.
PHOTO: AP
Bush was expected to nominate Snow, chairman of CSX Corp, to succeed Paul O'Neill, who, along with top White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, abruptly resigned on Friday at the White House's request.
Snow, a lawyer and economist, helped build CSX into the biggest rail operator in the Eastern US after serving stints in the former Ford administration during the mid-1970s as an assistant secretary and under secretary at the Transportation Department.
Among his business affiliations, which include directorships in several other companies, he has chaired the Business Roundtable, a powerful association of chief executives of the country's leading corporations.
Snow's name only emerged from a wide-ranging mix of prospective Treasury nominees Sunday.
Final background checks potentially could delay a formal announcement, but the Bush administration evidently wants to get a new Treasury chief in place quickly as it readies a package of measures to present to Congress in January for boosting the pace of economic activity.
Snow has blemish-free credentials as well as a parallel interest in ensuring that top business leaders play by the rules.
Snow has been serving as co-chairman of a Conference Board blue-ribbon commission on corporate governance. In its first report last September, the panel called for widespread reforms in the way executive compensation is determined.
In a news release accompanying the report's issuance, Snow deplored the series of corporate scandals involving companies like Enron that weighed on the US stock market this year.
"These egregious failures evidence a clear breach of the basic contract that underlies corporate capitalism," Snow said back in September.
Snow is a native of Toledo, Ohio, and did his undergraduate studies at the University of Ohio before completing a doctorate in economics at the University of Virginia in the mid-1960s, and later a law degree from George Washington University.
After launching his business career in the late 1970s, Snow established himself as a titan of industry and was no stranger to complex deals in his leadership of CSX.
At the company's helm, Snow was heavily involved in the US$10 billion deal that saw CSX and rival Norfolk Southern Corp split up Conrail, once the dominant force in the Northeast, bringing a long and bitterly fought contest to an end.
Business Week magazine credited him with helping turn around CSX in a 1992 article titled "The Corporate Elite: Masters of the Game." It noted that he did so by selling off non-transportation related assets and sharply cutting staff.
"John W. Snow has bitten his share of bullets," the article said.
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