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Oracle CFO Leaves after Four Months of Service 152

An anonymous reader writes "Oracle's CFO and Co-President Greg Maffei has quit. He will be succeeded by Safra Catz, who has been with Oracle for a while, and it will be interesting to see how long she lasts. Before Maffei, Harry You was CFO for 9 months, and before him was Jeff Henley. What's with the CFO shuffle at Oracle?"
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Oracle CFO Leaves after Four Months of Service

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  • Money (Score:5, Funny)

    by msbsod ( 574856 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:47PM (#13947007)
    CFO's earn so much that 9 months are enough for the rest of their life.
    • Re:Money (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DurendalMac ( 736637 )
      Or maybe it's because Larry Ellison is an even bigger asshole than Steve Jobs...
      • Not sure how this is troll. His reputation is well known. That and his infamous licensing schemes (our bill will be based upon the number of times we suspect you even THOUGHT about Oracle). Larry is not someone I'd want as my supervisor.
  • by catwh0re ( 540371 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:48PM (#13947016)
    When the CFO leaves, it's usually because they think they're in a sinking ship.
    • by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:56PM (#13947063)
      Or they want to leave before they get indicted. If a CFO leaves just before a quarterly report, it generally means he is resigning to avoid committing perjury by signing a report he knows to be false. I beleive this report was intentionally delayed also, which is further evidence that there might be statements in the report that nobody wants to sign their name to.
    • by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:01PM (#13947088) Homepage Journal
      "When the CFO leaves, it's usually because they think they're in a sinking ship."

      Yeah, Oracles obviously in the direst of direly dire straights....
      I mean really rough times...
      Yes, the shio is sinking!

      I suspect Netcraft will confirm Oracles death any moment now.

      • by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:19PM (#13947167) Homepage Journal
        well, if they are trying to create deceptive profit reports, that would be a good reason a CFO would leave. It would also indicate a problem with the company.

        Not saying they are sinking, but don't just assume there not having issues. Everyone thought Enron was in good shape, until the very last minute.

        Now we have Sarbanes Oxley, a good reason for CFO to not look the other way.
        • well, if they are trying to create deceptive profit reports, that would be a good reason a CFO would leave. It would also indicate a problem with the company.

          Yeah, I my first thought was "Securities Fraud" but I don't know what is going on there well enough to know.

          Now, it doesn't mean that the company is sinking, but I have absolutely no intention of purchasing any Oracle stock in the reasonable future.

          Regarding Enron, a good part of the issue was Fastow, who was siphoning off all of Enron's solid investme
    • When the CFO leaves, it's usually because they think they're in a sinking ship.

      I have to agree with you here. It does seem odd that one quits after 9 months, and then the next one lasts an even shorter amount of time... Doesnt look for Oricle.
    • Well Oracle rightly or wrongly is a sinking ship. With MySQL 5, PostGreSQL, and MS SQL. we have a slue of Good enough for most uses Database systems. They may not be as feature rich but they get the job done and they are much more affordable, even the Microsoft option. Most places I have been to are moving off Oracle, or planning on it. Or have been off for a while. The problem when companies got use to charging a lot of a license when cheaper people come in the company just doesn't know how to lower
        • The free ORacle "lite" is meant only as a demo. It has very severe limitations on database size and what kind of hardware it can utilize. They did a very good job of making sure it would only be used as a demo or by people who would be better off with Access anyway. Once you get beyond the free version, prepare to turn over your right arm AND firstborn for licence fees and support contracts. And don't be decieved into thinking you can get away with not having a support contract; Oracle is a complicated
      • It seems that you're suggesting that Oracle is getting SGI'ed. Is that the case? Perhaps. There are now several competitors to its product, and what was once unique from them is now far more common. However, there are many companies that have invested huge sums of money in Oracle products, and nothing is going to change that fact. Oracle will most likely be around for a while.

        It will be interesting to see if Oracle eventually goes the way of SGI, or if they manage to pull a Sun and revive themselves before
      • Anyone who says this has NO idea what they are saying. MySQL may be enough for some companies, but not for us. If you discount that our application requires is due to support from the application vendor, we depend on Oracle. Oracle is better in every respect then MySQL. We have point in time recovery on our Oracle DB plus Oracle never breaks a sweat. 10g (the g stands for Grid) sets up alot of grid style processing. I hope some day that we can eventualy take over all of our computers at night to incre
        • I wasn't saying that Oracle isn't better or even on-par with the other. But for Most companies the cheaper alternatives are good enough for their use. Most companies don't deal with so much data that they can justify the cost of Oracle, most of them are happy that they were able to get some of the employees off Excel, Access and FoxPro. Most companies don't have millions of transactions a second, some are lucky when they have a 10 transactions a second. If you are a like an Experion then yea you going
          • Where I work it's a mixed environment. We have some applications that require either big iron 12 and 16 way Sun boxes running Oracle 10g. We have other applications that require the high availability and scalability of Oracle RAC distributed across several RHAS nodes. We also have internal applications that actually perform better with SleepyCat (BDB) running locally and replicating to failover nodes. There are also lots of web based applications that hum along just fine with MySQL and PostgreSQL as the
    • Isn't it a realtively well known fact that Ellison is a bastard to work for?
    • When the CFO leaves, it's usually because they think they're in a sinking ship.

      No fooling, it is not a good sign. See NorTel .... when CFOs leave early it is not good. When they have been there awhile and get a better offier this is good.

      So the question is how far will the stock drop... -0.28 (2.24%) for the day... bet more is to follow.

    • Before Greg Maffei left Oracle, he left MSFT. Were they a sinking ship then?
      • by Dwonis ( 52652 ) * on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:53PM (#13947345)
        MSFT is a sinking ship, but it's a vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big ship that will take an equally long time to sink -- long enough that it might end up being repaired before it's too late. :P
        • The grandparent is right that *usually* when CFO leaves, the company is a sinking ship - financially. In other words, expect discovery of cooked books followed by SEC investigation and indictments of top management. MSFT was/is anything but that. It's only a sinking ship in terms of browser dipping all the way down to 90% market share.
          • Do you know the dirty little secret of MSFT?

            I think you do not.

            If they fail to *grow* their stock will drop.

            Under which standard a drop in market share equals death.

            The most important theng to remember is that when their OS market share starts to drop they are in real trouble.

            So it begins.
        • by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:10PM (#13947686)
          MSFT is a sinking ship, but it's a vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big ship that will take an equally long time to sink -- long enough that it might end up being repaired before it's too late. :P

          I love Linux just as much as the next guy (and has been my only home desktop for 5 years), but unlike DEC & Sun, MSFT's revenue keeps on increasing at an incredible pace.

          When they have flat (not declining, but flat) revenues for 3 straight years, then I'll believe that it's sinking.

          http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=MSFT&annual [yahoo.com]
          http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=MSFT&annual [yahoo.com]
          http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=MSFT&annual [yahoo.com]
          • If nothing has changed in the last two years that profit still relies on exactly two sources: Windows and Office. All other markets MSFT tried to enter don't make money for them. And as if that wasn't bad enough for a company the successes of those two cash cows are tightly entangled with each other. I wouldn't talk about a healthy company in that context.
          • Bad comparison, DEC has been gone from the business for quite a while. DEC went under and Compaq bought the leftovers. SUN is holding on pretty good, they lost a penny a share but are growing slightly. If you used HP instead of DEC you would have a better illustration.
            • Bad comparison, DEC has been gone from the business for quite a while. DEC went under

              No, that's the point. Unlike MSFT, DEC actually was a sinking ship that, unlike IBM, was unable to adjust to the New World Order.

              OP thinks that is sinking just like DEC was.

              HP is probably sinking too, FWIW.

              Thanks, Bob & Carly, for killing 2 great companies!!!
      • by khallow ( 566160 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @10:15PM (#13947449)
        He spent 7 years at MS and 5 years as CEO of 360networks which tanked (he took it through bankrupcy court. So he doesn't have a flighty record or a record of bailing out when the going gets rough. If I were an Oracle shareholder, I'd want to know why Oracle can't keep CFO talent.
    • Sometimes a CFO is brought in to address a specific area of need. 4 months isn't really enough time to change much in a company the size of Oracle though. Larry's a tyrant. That'd be my guess.
    • by queenb**ch ( 446380 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:45PM (#13947301) Homepage Journal
      High turn over in upper management means:

      1) Legal fears - criminal or civil

      2) Another C-level guy that no one can stand

      3) Company is tanking

      My personal vote is for #2 and I suspect his initials are L.E.

      2 cents,

      Queen B
      • Or 4) they are in legal trouble. Like just happened in my company. Sigh. Enrons will always be around.
      • Everyone knows LE is an assh()le, but CFOs leaving right and left probably indicates a deeper issue. My bet is some funny accounting on all these mergers/buyouts Oracle has been doing. I wonder if they are trying to pull some fast moves with how they handle the acquisition expenses. As I recall from my MBA the excess of cost over book value has to be handled as Goodwill and amortized over 10? yrs. Oracle may be trying to avoid that, because it will show they paid WAY too much for Peoplesoft.

        P.S. Enjoyed you
  • One Word: (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doktor Memory ( 237313 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:48PM (#13947018) Journal
    "Larry"
  • by Anonymous Coward
    To quote that annoying Sit-and-sleep commercial finance guy:

    You're killing me, Larry!!!!!!!!!!
  • by ral315 ( 741081 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:48PM (#13947023)
    "What's with the CFO shuffle at Oracle?" We didn't mean to cause any trouble; We're just doin' the CFO Shuffle.
  • Not a good sign... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by csmacd ( 221163 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:51PM (#13947037) Homepage
    CFOs depart quickly because they see tyranical leadership, bad financial situation, or both. Sounds like there are some serious problems in Oracle's financial sector.
  • by Deathbane27 ( 884594 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:53PM (#13947048)
    I imagine Oracle's financials are like a messy kitchen. Cleaning it doesn't sound like too bad of a job until you actually walk in and see it... Yes, I live in a bachelor pad.
  • by wintermute42 ( 710554 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:59PM (#13947078) Homepage

    What's with the CFO shuffle at Oracle?

    Oh, nothing more than fear of doing jail time.

    Seriously, after Tyco, WorldCom and Enron, a CFO that is asked to support accounting that might be considered questionable bears some serious risks (as they should). The compensation just does not justify the risk of jail time. At least not for your typical CFO.

  • Life at Oracle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03, 2005 @08:59PM (#13947081)
    Posting anonymously 'cause I still want a job...
    I've been consulting for Oracle for a couple years now and I'm not surprised by this. I get reorg'ed every three months at the minimum, I can't count the number of managers I've had since I've been working here - most know my name only by my expense reports. Every so often my cell phone rings and the voice on the other end says "Hi, I'm ****, your new manager." Why would it be any different in the adminisphere?
    I've worked for companies big and small over the years and while the job has its good points, the constant turnover isn't one of them
    • Re:Life at Oracle (Score:5, Informative)

      by gentlemoose ( 313278 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:50PM (#13947327) Homepage
      I was with Oracle for 5 years. As I'm no longer with them, I don't fear for my job. AC up there, however, as an Oracle consultant, good call.

      Oracle reorgs its stovepipes annually, and there are divisional and departmental reorgs that shake out for months at a time in the aftermath of the larger reorgs. It happens. No big deal.

      Safra, I encountered once. Not.the.most.pleasant.experience.of.my.life.
      • Safra, I encountered once. Not.the.most.pleasant.experience.of.my.life.

        So give us the dirt on Safra, why wasn't it pleasant? I Googled for her picture. She looks cute.

        • This is speculation, but Safra has been at Larry's side longer than several wives. She and Henley are probably the only two people who can stand him, my guess would be that she is probably equally ruthless and that they enjoy working together (she is rich enough to not need to be there any longer and was not anything close to a day 1 employee).
    • Re:Life at Oracle (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:54PM (#13947348)
      I left Oracle as a sysadmin after only 2 months on the job in their flagship datacenter. The entire organization from the top down is ruled by fear. Fear of the guy above you. I was in constant concern for my job the entire time, not because I couldn't perform, but afraid that I would do something politically wrong. And I was just a sysadmin!

      It sucked, bigtime. Though they did have a crazy amount of servers and a whole buttload of technology.

      Everything was to be feared, however.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        After having worked at least 60 hours so far this week, I read your first line -- no joke -- as:

        "I left Oracle as a sysadmin after only 2 months on the job as a pole dancer."

        I thought, "Woohoo ... great, a troll that might actually be an amusing joke. I could use a joke right about now."

        Then I realized I really have to ditch this job that I'm working so much at every week to the point that I'm starting to see things that just aren't there. Hafta wonder though ... pole dancer?! Where the hell is my
      • I worked there for a couple of years as well.. and while I did change managers a couple of times, I was never 'afraid' for my job. I enjoyed my time there and compared to other companies I worked for I was treated just as well or better.
  • I'm just wondering why there wasn't someone in the CFO's department that could have stood in so the analyst's day and Oracle's presence at the Goldman's investment conference could have gone off without a hitch.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, Maffei - that's Microsoft's old money wizard... if he's jumping ship that's not a good sign.
    • by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:28PM (#13947753)
      He was also the last well-respected Microsoft CFO. While Maffei was in charge, Microsoft could literally do nothing wrong financially. When the earnings were announced, he'd say something like "don't expect good results next quarter" and the stock would skyrocket. When Connors replaced him, it was almost the exact opposite. Connors would say virtually the same thing, and the stock would tank. Microsoft has definitely suffered from the leadership vacuum that Maffei's departure left.
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:11PM (#13947133)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Case exited because Carl Icahn wanted his ass out. Case and the other execs that pushed the TW/AOL merger were responsible for destroying investor wealth on a vast scale. Case was the last of these empire-killers to go.

      Even if Case was merely mediocre, Icahn would still want him out, since clearing out company founders with emotional ties to the company is a big investor's first step towards jerking it any which way he can to shake some more coin out of it.

      Since Icahn's actions will probably increase the va

      • They transfered wealth from Time Warner shareholders to AOL shareholders. The fact that there appeard to be great value in the AOL company was mostly illusion. That it cost Time Warner about half the company to find that out ranks up there with not getting an exclusive license for MS/DOS and booting Woz from HP. I'm surprised that Case lasted as long as he did, considering he was a constant reminder to everyone at Time Warner that you over paid. I'm not sure if Case figured this out beforehand. I concu
  • Guilt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lucm ( 889690 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:20PM (#13947174)
    One just can't buy an Oracle database license. Accountants, lawyers and engineers must be involved to find out what insane amounts you will have to feed the monster every year. Basically, it's cheaper to have a SQL Server 4-processor license than hiring the experts required to calculate your Oracle yearly premium for the same hardware.

    So my guess is that either the CFOs feel bad about selling incredibly overpriced products, or they just plain don't understand how the hell they can manage all these crazy contracts.

    When Microsoft licensing is the low-cost alternative to your product, there is something terribly wrong.

    • Re:Guilt (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:22PM (#13947184) Homepage Journal
      except MSs product is not in the same league as Oracle.

      • Re:Guilt (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Actually you can only hold out so long with that argument. M$ will hit that ball many times and at some point take it out of the park. Yeah Yeah I'm a big Fitzmas fan
      • that would be the league of bloated, overpriced cruftware with obsolete 1980's indexing technology requiring an inordinate amount of manual tuning and configuring? oh yeah, I do Oracle "grid" and RAC clusters for a living. keep buying it, suckers
      • Re:Guilt (Score:3, Interesting)

        by duffbeer703 ( 177751 )
        Have you ever used Oracle? Its a bigger steaming pile of shit than Lotus Notes, and that says alot.

        Oracle can do amazing things. But with the money you need to spend on Oracle consultants, you could custom-write whatever you are buying from Oracle.
        • Have you ever used Oracle? Its a bigger steaming pile of shit than Lotus Notes, and that says alot.

          And of course, that would explain how Oracle became the #2 software company on the planet, and how their products are used in the most mission-critical applications all over the world. But hey, maybe the rest of the world is wrong, and you're right! It's possible.
          • I'm not an Oracle user or admin, but I know many who are, some of whom have been for a decade or more, and their opinion of Oracle is almost uniformly negative. It's exactly like others have said here: you can get Oracle to do anything... eventually, and after spending multiple megabucks over the life of the project on consultants, Oracle support contracts, and accumulated aggravation as Oracle's legendary salespeople try to high-pressure you into yet another purchase you are pretty sure you don't need. F
          • Sales in the Fortune 1000 are all about who you know, not what you are selling.

            Look at an Oracle or IBM shop. There's a salesman who calls on the executive management every quarter (at least) and usually at least a few vendor consultants or business partners on-site at the client. So when Joe IGS/Oracle Consultant hears about the new Foobar 3.0 project, he mentions it to his boss. Then, somehow, magically, the sales rep appears before the execs and knows exactly what they are going to want.

            Not all mission c
        • Comparing Oracle to Lotus Notes is really a bit insulting.

          God, building a bigger pile of shit than Lotus Notes will get you an automatic Nobel Prize in Biology. If you burn the stuff you could solve the world's energy problem which will also net you the Peace prize.
      • But IBM's are, and yet I don't hear the constant complaints about them that I do about Oracle.
    • Re:Guilt (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Comparing Oracle and SQL Server is like comparing a Lambhorghini to a Bicycle. Or a Miss Universe to a bag lady. Its just not done by people in the know. That said the only thing that comes close nowadays is Postgres.
      • Considering that PostGres and SQL Server have the same Berkeley roots, I'm going to have to disagree there.

        SQL Server and PostGres are at about the same level as far as sophistication goes. SQL Server wins in the ease of administration department, but lags flexibility and openness.

        As far as "just being an SQL 92 RDBMS" running on a SMP (but single image system), all three systems are at the same level. (That means any ignoring any specific clustering/dev frameworks/warehousing stuff)
        • So where are Oracles roots?

          My understanding was they came out of the same Berkeley roots?
          • Oracle has always been just Oracle's DB. A bunch of young programmers saw the work being done at IBM (SQL/DS, System R) and decided they wanted to join the party. They created a working implementation of the standard based on the white paper for the VAX. Intent was to get the DB to work on many of the lower-cost minicomputers of the time, IIRC, which was possible once they re-wrote it in C for version 3.
    • Byzantine licensing (Score:3, Interesting)

      by obtuse ( 79208 )
      Oracle: The company that sold the state of California more licenses than its entire work force. *

      I had fun when I bought an Oracle license for our developers, and got a follow-up call from a sales rep explaining why I hadn't actually bought a valid license. After I explained exactly how we were testing and considering deploying Oracle, he went into hilarious detail about how much the licenses we needed would cost. Actually, at first he just alluded to all the different aspects of licensing we needed to worr
  • Furry Me (Score:4, Funny)

    by Swamii ( 594522 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:24PM (#13947198) Homepage
    Harry You

    There's gotta be a joke in there somewhere.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:31PM (#13947233)
    > You was CFO for 9 months

    What? No I wasn't.
  • Larry (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:39PM (#13947271)
    For some reason the CFOs have found it disturbing that Larry expects them to cut off their pinky if there are profit warnings :)
  • One Raging Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
  • by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @09:55PM (#13947351) Homepage Journal
    First rule of Oracle: Larry Ellison is God. You are not God. Disagreements with God will be answered by plagues.
  • Oracles CFO (Score:2, Funny)

    by pookemon ( 909195 )
    Maybe they couldn't stand the financial package... ;)
  • by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @10:00PM (#13947368) Homepage
    Oracle CFO Leaves after Four Months of Service.

    He must have finally gotten a database up and running.

  • by Andrew Tanenbaum ( 896883 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @10:06PM (#13947394)
    I am wondering if anyone has information on how compensation, particularily any exit bonuses he received. There have been rumors about layoffs lately, so I would be apalled if the money he took would be enough to fund those employees.
    • Sadly, parent was modded as Troll, but this is actually one of the first things that came to my mind -- how much his contract-mandated golden parachute was/is... Perhaps that's a commentary on American business culture -- perhaps it's just reflective of the news we've seen so much of of late, what with so many CEO's and other C-ilk walking away with wads of cash after short, ineffective stints, whilst lower-rung employees get the inevitable pink slip.
  • by cornice ( 9801 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @10:43PM (#13947563)
    Q - What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?

    A - God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.
  • The big change here is Sarbanes Oxley. Post SOX, keeping CFOs at any company is tougher, and I think more so for tech companies whose accounting by nature is less concrete. This has a huge impact for geeks because it also puts a relatively larger burden on small companies (there's about two mil. a year to be paid regardless of how big you are). So more of us will end up working at supermegasoft and less at smaller, friendlier companies than would have sans SOX.
  • by Phat_Tony ( 661117 ) on Thursday November 03, 2005 @11:42PM (#13947824)
    Who knows, maybe they've just had an unfortunate series of personal crises or similar unrelated coincidences that don't reflect poorly on the company.

    Or, maybe it takes from four to nine months to shovel to the bottom of the accounting muck at Oracle. At that point, a CFO reaches the inescapable conclusion that they must either:
    1. Issue a radical restatement of earnings for one or more previous quarters in their next financial report.
    2. Commit perjury.
    If the CEO and board disagree with the necessity of revising past financial statements, and the CFO doesn't feel like taking his chances with committing fraud (especially in the current post-scandel atmosphere), then it's time to shop for a new CFO. At the least, it will give the higher-ups a few more months to inconspicuously sell some stock while the next CFO's still busy shoveling.

  • Two words: Larry Ellison.
  • ...no trouble, I'm just here to do the CFO shuffle.

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