Loral to Buy Remainder of Its Aerospace Unit : Defense: It will acquire the rest of its Newport Beach subsidiary in a stock deal valued at $197.5 million.

In a deal valued at $197.5 million, Loral Corp. said Wednesday that it will acquire the 41% stake in the former Ford Aerospace Corp. that it does not already own.

The defense electronics company said it signed an agreement with a unit of Shearson Lehman Brothers to buy the rest of Loral Aerospace Corp. in Newport Beach for 6.15 million shares of Loral stock. The transaction completes an acquisition that began in August, 1990, when Loral and Shearson teamed up to pay $715 million in cash for a stake in the aerospace subsidiary of Ford Motor Co. The partners allowed Ford Motor to keep $213.3 million in pension assets.

“We believe this transaction will be quite beneficial to our company by streamlining operations, increasing our equity base by about $200 million, preserving cash and, finally, adding to earnings,” Bernard L. Schwartz, chairman of Loral Corp., said in a statement from the company’s New York headquarters.

Elizabeth Allen, spokeswoman for Loral, said that the company has no plans to change its operation of Loral Aerospace, which is in the midst of layoffs but still employs about 2,000 people in a missile division and headquarters unit in Newport Beach.

“There is no particular reason this is happening now,” she said of the acquisition. “We own 100% of all of our other subsidiaries, so we wanted to complete this one.”

The deal appears to have been a good investment for Shearson, which in 1990 put up $147 million in cash for the Ford Aerospace deal. Now, the company will receive the $197.5 million worth of Loral stock.

Shearson also keeps a 21% stake in Space Systems Loral in Sunnyvale, a satellite manufacturing company that was also acquired from Ford Aerospace as part of the deal.

The partners reaped $185 million when they sold the BDM International defense consulting unit of Ford Aerospace in October, 1990. They also sold a 49% interest in Space Systems Loral to three European companies. Those firms still hold 49% of Space Systems Loral, and Loral owns 30%.

The latest deal is expected to close by July 31.