Inman to Become Chairman of New Defense Company in Texas

Bobby R. Inman, who announced earlier this month that he would resign as president and chief executive of Microelectronics & Computer Technology Corp., has accepted a position as chairman of Westmark Systems Inc., a new Texas-based defense industry holding company.

Inman will also become Westmark’s chief executive next Jan. 1, when he leaves MCC.

The 55-year-old Inman, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and former deputy director of the CIA, issued a statement saying that he found Westmark “a unique opportunity to build a company dedicated to the integrity, quality and outstanding performance so critical to America’s future.”

Westmark Systems is a privately owned company whose sponsor and principal shareholder is Mason Best Co., a merchant banking company founded by Elvis L. Mason and Randy Best. With offices in Dallas, Houston and London, Mason Best is the principal shareholder of several operating companies in multiple lines of business.

Mason Best’s board includes such well-known businessmen as Xerox Chairman David T. Kearns and Union Pacific Chairman Drew Lewis.

Inman was widely identified as the guiding hand behind MCC, a high-technology consortium based in Austin, Tex., that has been billed as this country’s chief effort to compete against Japan’s advanced research efforts. Inman joined MCC in January, 1983, and observers credit him with getting the consortium off the ground.

MCC is seeking, among other things, to develop a so-called fifth-generation computer that would use artificial intelligence.