Norfolk Southern Corp.’s chief executive officer was lambasted by politicians as the epitome of everything wrong with the profit-obsessed railroad industry when a derailment caused a toxic disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, last year.
Now, an activist investor is waging an increasingly personal battle to fire the CEO — but not because it wants the railroad to spend more on safety initiatives. Instead, Ancora Holdings Group is tagging him as a soft-touch marketing guy who’s overly deferential to workers and customers and unwilling to implement the operational changes necessary to compete in the notoriously cutthroat industry.
