LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Howard Hughes: Controls
built 191 days ago
Hughes Communications keeps its principal assets higher even than visionary Howard Hughes could have imagined. Its principal operating subsidiary, Hughes Network Systems, is a leading provider of broadband satellite networks and services and the leading provider of satellite-based Internet access in North America. It ... develops communications equipment for mobile satellite-based and cellular mobile network operators, as well as other users of terrestrial microwave technology. Formerly known as SkyTerra Holdings, Hughes Communications was spun off from SkyTerra Communications at the end of 2005. SkyTerra's controlling stockholder, Apollo Advisors, also owns a 66% stake in Hughes Communications.
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During this period, Hughes became increasingly paranoid and his behavior turned more and more eccentric. He began alienating his closest advisors and top executives. TWA, the airline which Hughes helped guide to success over the past two decades, eventually ended up forcing Hughes out of power in 1960. Hughes, though, still owned 78% of the airline and he would battle to regain control of the airline over the next several years. In 1966, a federal court eventually ruled that Hughes would have to relinquish control. Hughes sold his shares of the airline for $547 million, making Hughes one of the richest men in the world.
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In 1948, Hughes gained control of RKO, a struggling major Hollywood studio, by acquiring 25% of the outstanding stock. During his tenure, RKO suffered as a result of his management style. Within weeks of taking control, he dismissed three-quarters of the work force and production was shut down for six months in 1949 while he undertook the investigation of the politics of all remaining studio employees. Completed pictures would be sent back for reshooting if he felt his star (especially female) was not properly presented, or if a film's anti-communist politics were not sufficiently clear. An aborted sale in 1952 to a Chicago-based group with no experience in the industry disrupted studio operations even further.
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Hughes purchases 929,000 shares in RKO Studios. He cuts staff from 2,500 to 600. His ‘micro-management’ of the studio and his absurd behaviour – for instance, he shuts down the operation for weeks at a time to try to control dust or to redraft his will – will eventually lead to its downfall (see 1955).
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Costing $400 million, the purchase of the new jet airliners was too much, even for a centimillionaire like Hughes. He had to get outside financing, and these creditors eventually forced Hughes give up control of TWA.
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