Heir Apparent at Northrop Is Designated

Northrop Grumman Corp. is expected to announce today that Chief Financial Officer Wesley G. Bush will take on the additional role of president, making the 45-year-old the heir apparent at the nation’s third-largest defense contractor.

The promotion marks an extraordinary corporate climb for Bush, a boyish-looking executive who was named chief financial officer less than a year ago after serving as the youngest head of a division at the Century City-based company.

But Northrop Chairman and Chief Executive Ronald D. Sugar said in an interview Wednesday that Bush’s promotion doesn’t mean Sugar will be stepping down anytime soon.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Sugar, who became head of the company in 2003. “We are going to operate as a team. There is plenty of work to go around.”

Sugar, 57, said Bush would help him oversee operations and play a key role in setting the strategic direction of the company.

Bush, who has built a reputation for turning around troubled projects and poor performing businesses, faces a challenging environment.

Defense contractors benefited from a double-digit growth in the Pentagon budget in the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the pace of spending has slowed.

Northrop is particularly vulnerable to the slowdown because more than 90% of its revenue comes from government contracts. But Sugar insists that the company is focused on government programs that have long-term growth potential.

Northrop develops and builds a variety of military equipment, including nuclear aircraft carriers, submarines, robotic spy planes and satellites. It also manages government facilities and runs one of the largest federal information technology businesses.

Bush, who holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined TRW Inc.’s space technology operations in Redondo Beach in 1987. Northrop acquired TRW in 2002.

At TRW he headed a multibillion-dollar military satellite program at the age of 35. In 2002, shortly after the TRW sale, Bush was named to head its Redondo Beach division, becoming the youngest senior executive at Northrop.

Simon Ramo, the 93-year-old co-founder of TRW who still holds regular lunch meetings with up-and-coming aerospace executives, said Bush stood out early in his career.

“Once in a while an executive comes along and you just know that the person will go to the top. He was one of them,” Ramo said.