NATION : GM to Repurchase Institute’s Stock

General Motors Corp. said today it will pay nearly $1 billion to repurchase from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute some of the special class of stock it issued when it bought Hughes Aircraft Co. in 1985 for $5.2 billion.

At the time, GM paid $2.7 billion in cash to the institute along with 100 million shares of new Class H stock, worth about $2.5 billion at the time, for the unit, which has since been named GM Hughes Electronics. In the original agreement, GM guaranteed to Hughes that the price of the Class H shares would be $30 by the end of 1989 or it would make up the difference. Analysts say that guarantee has deflated the value of the shares.