Word: summa
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...many old Hughes aides. Using his court-appointed power as sole stockholder, Lummis fired three company directors, including Davis, whom he also dropped as general counsel. Last year Lummis filed a suit against Davis and eleven other former Hughes employees, charging them with bleeding $50 million out of Summa through extravagant salaries, interest-free loans to themselves, questionable investments and perks like company-built homes. Robert Maheu, Hughes' chief lieutenant until 1970, says bluntly: "There has never been any doubt in my mind that Davis and Gay were trying to steal an empire...
After ousting the cronies, Lummis moved to stop the excesses that were squeezing Summa dry. He has sold off Hughes' personal fleet of planes and several holdings, including the Landmark Hotel in Las Vegas, the Xanadu Beach Hotel in the Bahamas, the TV station in Las Vegas, the ranches, Football Today and 3,000 inactive mining claims. Summa has even been able to unload the Spruce Goose without having to break it in pieces, as once threatened. This week the plane will be given to the Aero Club of Southern California, which will put it on display in Long...
...Summa's new boss has organized the remaining properties in three broad groups-hotels and casinos, aircraft construction and real estate. Lummis hired Phil Hannifin, former chairman of the Nevada gaming-control board, to run the company's hotels and casinos. Hannifin's first project: to finish a $55 million overhaul of the dilapidated Desert Inn, where Hughes had lived as a recluse for four years. Jack Real, a former Lockheed executive, was put in charge of Hughes Helicopters. The company, which lost money in the early '70s, is now in the black, and Real expects...
...Montecruz cigars, lives in a three-bedroom condo in the fashionable Spanish Oaks section of Las Vegas. He drives his own 1975 Chrysler New Yorker. He often lunches alone, reading a newspaper at the Desert Inn and Country Club or in the coffee shop of the Sands Hotel, which Summa owns. His $225,000-a-year income derives from his position as court-approved administrator of the Hughes estate. Lummis has no plans to expand Summa into new fields, seeing his job as one of pulling the company together. Said he last week: "We don't have a charter...
...Summa under Lummis has changed its style. Gone is the compulsive secrecy that once enveloped Hughes' vast and tangled affairs. Recalls William Rankin, a longtime Hughes employee who is now No. 2 at Summa: "Everything was secret unless we were told otherwise. We hired a p.r. agency to say, 'No comment.' " Top executives no longer have to punch a code into an elevator in the parking garage before they can enter the firm's unpretentious headquarters two miles from the Las Vegas strip. Company officers now work in fourth-floor offices rather than the windowless basement...