US President George W. Bush today named Mr John Snow as his new Treasury Secretary.
Mr Bush fired previous Treasury Secretary Mr Paul O'Neill and White House economic adviser Mr Larry Lindsey last week as part of a shake-up designed to control political damage from the ailing economy.
Mr Snow (63), is chairman, president and chief executive of CSX, a freight and transport conglomerate based in Richmond, Virginia. The firm runs the largest rail freight network in the eastern United States.
He was also deputy under-secretary at the Transportation Department under President Gerald Ford.
Mr Bush has said Mr Snow is his choice, pending a final interview, the officials said. He intends to replace Mr Lindsey with Mr Stephen Friedman, a former co-chairman at investment firm Goldman Sachs, they said.
The president hopes they will both be better than Mr O'Neill and Mr Lindsey at communicating the administration's economic policies to both Congress and the public, officials said.
Mr Snow's first task would be to help build support for a major economic package Bush plans to introduce later this month or in early January.
The White House has been working for months on a new package centred on more tax cuts for lower and middle income individuals, playing down the administration's earlier focus on business-side tax proposals to stimulate investment.
Other ideas on the table are designed to encourage individual investors in the volatile stock market.
AP