Westinghouse chief Candris will retire
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Westinghouse Electric Co. president and CEO Aris Candris will retire effective March 31 and be replaced as president and CEO by current president of the Americas region Jim Ferland, the nuclear energy firm announced Monday.
Mr. Candris, 60, has headed the Cranberry-based firm since July 2008 and will stay on as a senior adviser to the management team. He started at Westinghouse in 1975.
Mr. Ferland will work with Ricardo Perez, the current president of operations, who's been named president and chief operating officer. Together, they form the new Westinghouse Executive Office, a company leadership setup of two presidents with "clearly defined responsibilities," the firm said in a press release.
Westinghouse's revenue in Mr. Candris' first year was $3.2 billion, up $1 billion from the year before. It rose to $4.2 billion in 2009 and then surged ahead $500 million for a 2010 revenue of $4.7 billion.
The company employs about 3,300 workers in the Pittsburgh region, most of whom work out of a 2-year-old campus in Cranberry. Westinghouse was sold to Toshiba in 2006.
Mr. Candris' tenure has been dominated by the approval process for the AP1000, a nuclear reactor that's become the firm's flagship product.
The AP1000 secured final approval in late December, which will allow Westinghouse to finish building the first domestic nuclear power plants since the Three Mile Island accident of 1979 near Harrisburg. Several models are already planned in other countries.
"He helped keep the firm vibrant during the lean years of the 1980s and 1990s, and he very much laid the groundwork for the global nuclear energy renaissance we are experiencing today," board chairman Shigenori Shiga said in a statement.
First Published January 10, 2012 12:00 am
