Institute May Sell Hughes Aircraft Co.

Hughes Aircraft Co., one of the Pentagon’s largest suppliers of missiles, radar and high-technology equipment, may soon be sold, the private Howard Hughes Medical Institute said today.

In a brief release, trustees of the Miami-based nonprofit medical foundation said they had instructed the New York investment banking firm of Morgan Stanley and Co. to proceed with preparations for a public offering or a private sale of the aircraft firm.

The foundation has owned Hughes Aircraft since 1953, when Howard Hughes signed it over to the institute.

Sale Speculated It has been speculated since early last year that the medical foundation might sell the El Segundo-based aerospace giant.

Last March, Allen Puckett, the aircraft firm’s chairman, said as much as 50% of the firm might be purchased by the company’s employee stock ownership plan.

“Such a plan would undoubtedly include some public ownership and very likely some continued ownership by the institute,” Puckett said at the time.

He also said he considered sale of Hughes Aircraft by the medical institute a matter of “when, not if.”

68,000 Workers The company has about 68,000 workers, most of them in California. It had sales of $4.9 billion for the fiscal year ending Jan. 1, 1984.

Hughes was sole trustee of the medical foundation until his death in 1976, but he did not spell out who his successors would be.

As a result, the institute’s two-man executive committee assumed power after the industrialist’s death.

Last January, a suit in the Court of Chancery in Delaware, where the institute is incorporated, successfully challenged the executive committee’s control.

The medical institute focuses its research on three areas of bio-medicine: genetics, immunology and endocrinology.