OHIO

OHIO

FirstEnergy earnings
drop 9% in third quarter

AKRON — FirstEnergy Corp. said Tuesday that its earnings dropped 9 percent in the third quarter because of higher replacement power costs stemming from a 25-day outage at its Perry nuclear power plant.

FirstEnergy said it earned $413 million, or $1.34 per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with earnings of $454 million, or $1.40 per share, a year ago. Revenue rose to $3.6 billion for the quarter, up from $3.4 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Man guilty of misleading
nuclear plant regulators

TOLEDO — A federal jury found a former nuclear plant worker guilty Tuesday of concealing the worst corrosion ever found at a U.S. reactor. A second defendant was acquitted.

David Geisen, the Davis-Besse plant’s former engineering design manager, was accused of misleading regulators into believing the plant along Lake Erie was safe. He faces up to five years in prison. Private contractor Rodney Cook was acquitted by the same federal jury.

NATION

Retiring Merrill Lynch CEO
gets $161.5M in benefits

NEW YORK — Merrill Lynch’s departing chief executive, Stan O’Neal, will walk away with $161.5 million in stock, options and retirement benefits, the company said Tuesday.

O’Neal, the second-highest paid Wall Street CEO in 2006, retired from Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. on Tuesday, almost a week after the investment bank reported its largest-ever quarterly loss. O’Neal’s ouster was expected after the loss.

Associated Press