A low profile, lofty standing
Safra Catz spent her first day at Oracle Corp. sitting at a large, round table in the back room of Chief Executive Larry Ellison’s executive suite.
She has remained in the shadows since that day in 1999, keeping a nondescript office near the CEO while moving up to become co-president and chief financial officer. Her behind-the- scenes devotion has served her well.
“There’s no difference between Safra and Larry,” said Mark Barrenechea, a former member of Oracle’s executive management committee, now a director of San Mateo, Calif.- based buyout firm Garnett & Helfrich. “One’s just at the microphone, and the other is behind the curtain.”
Ellison, 62, is so enamored of his CFO’s strategy that he has called her his heir apparent. He credits Catz, 45, with Oracle’s 18-month, $10.6-billion takeover of PeopleSoft Inc., a deal that transformed the Redwood City, Calif.-based company into the second-biggest writer of business-management software behind rival SAP of Walldorf, Germany.
The January 2005 purchase began a $20-billion buying spree of 27 companies, making Oracle a single-source of three types of software: databases, business-management systems and middleware, or software that connects computer servers.
“If I dropped dead tomorrow, Safra Catz would be the CEO of Oracle,” Ellison said at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference in September 2005 in San Francisco. “She is clearly our chief operating officer.”
Of course, the Oracle chief has tapped his successor before, then changed his mind. In 2000, he fired Ray Lane, president and COO. “Good luck recruiting Ellison’s successor until he declares it’s time,” said Stephen Mader, vice chairman of recruiter Christian & Timbers. “He’s brought in talented people, but do you see any true line of succession? I don’t.”
Nonetheless, analysts name Catz as Ellison’s right-hand woman. “She’s demonstrating survival capability in a relatively hostile environment,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at San Jose-based Enderle Group.
“Her ability to make so many acquisitions pay off is a great testament to her management skills,” said Tony Ursillo, who helps manage 19.2 million Oracle shares among $75 billion under management at Boston-based Loomis, Sayles & Co.
Few people can predict how Catz would lead Oracle should Ellison, as he puts it, “drop dead.” One of the highest-ranking women in corporate America, she rarely gives interviews or speaks publicly other than on analyst conference calls.
Oracle’s biggest shareholders don’t hear from her much. “Safra Catz is not that accessible to investors,” Ursillo said. “It’s less than I would expect from a top executive.”
A one-time managing director of investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, acquired by Credit Suisse First Boston in 2000, Catz protects her privacy so ferociously that few who know her will talk about her.
Her management style is called “tough” by former colleagues, an attitude she has said is necessary for a woman working in a man’s world. “You have to be better,” she told the Women’s High-Tech Coalition conference in May 2005 in Saratoga, Calif. “You have got to work harder, work longer, be louder.”
She is also highly intelligent, charming when she needs to be, and leaves no ambiguity about where she stands on an issue, said James Socas, senior vice president of corporate development at Symantec Corp., who worked with Catz at Donaldson, Lufkin.
“She’s a successful woman in a place known to value toughness,” Socas said. “It would be a tremendous misreading to think she couldn’t be a terrific CEO. It’s fair to say she focuses on the numbers, but more than that is her ability to deliver strategic transformation. Oracle’s numbers speak for themselves.”
