Ousted Hewlett-Packard CEO gets job at Oracle

Software giant Oracle Corp. has tapped former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Mark Hurd to be the company’s co-president and a director on its board.

Hurd, 53, resigned as head of HP, the world’s largest computer maker, on Aug. 6 after a former contract worker for the company accused him of sexual harassment.

HP’s investigations found no evidence of harassment, but uncovered “violations of HP’s Standards of Business Conduct” related to his expense reports, according to the company’s statement announcing his departure. Hurd had been at the Palo Alto company for five years.

Hurd will report directly to Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, according to a statement released late Monday afternoon.

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP,” Ellison said in a statement, “and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle.”

Hurd, through a spokesman, declined to comment. Messages to Oracle’s press contact, Deborah Hellinger, were not returned.

The company on Monday also announced the resignation of Charles Phillips, one of Oracle’s two co-presidents. It did not give a reason for his departure. Safra Catz, who is the other Oracle president, remains with the company.

Oracle, which once focused primarily on selling business software, in recent months has diversified into selling the computers that run the software, putting the Redwood City, Calif., company in direct competition with computer makers such as HP and IBM Corp.

“Oracle’s strategy of combining software and hardware will enable Oracle to beat IBM in both enterprise and server storage,” Hurd said in Oracle’s statement.

Oracle has a long way to go to catch up with IBM, which had revenue of $95.8 billion in 2009. Oracle posted revenue of $27.8 billion its fiscal year 2010 ended May 31.

alex.pham@latimes.com