Ellison Gets Stock Options in Lieu of Salary

Oracle Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Larry Ellison received options to buy 20 million shares of stock in the world’s largest maker of database software as part of a new plan that gives him a single large option grant and no salary. Ellison, 56, received $208,000 in salary and no bonus for its fiscal year ended May 31, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That represents the salary he’d accrued before the new package took effect, and was a 94% cut from fiscal 1999, when he received $3.75 million in salary and bonus. Oracle estimated Ellison’s options grant would be worth $438.3 million in 10 years if the stock rises 10% annually. In 1999, he received options for 3 million shares. Oracle said in the filing that Ellison’s option grant is intended to be the only one he receives until fiscal 2003. If Ellison could exercise the options today, they’d be worth almost $1.4 billion. Ellison was ranked 12th on Forbes magazine’s 1999 list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.