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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lml who wrote (14131)	7/3/2000 1:18:03 PM
From: Jim Lamb	Respond to of 19080

Oracle's Ellison to assume president, COO duties LOS ANGELES, July 3 (Reuters) - Larry Ellison, chairman and chief executive officer of Oracle Corp. (NasdaqNM:ORCL - news), will assume the duties of president and chief operating officer following the departure of Ray Lane, the company's No. 2 executive, a spokeswoman for Oracle said on Monday. Shares of Oracle, the world's second-largest software maker, were down 5-1/16, or 6 percent, at 79-1/16 in early trading on Nasdaq. Oracle announced late Friday that Lane, long rumoured to be on the verge of leaving the database giant, was stepping down, although he will remain on the company's board of directors. ``This could place near-term pressure on Oracle, as Lane had held senior positions at Oracle for the past 8 years and was highly regarded by the street,'' Chris Shilakes, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, said in a report. Oracle spokeswoman Jennifer Glass declined to comment on why Lane was leaving but said the company had no plans to replace him. ``Larry Ellison is assuming the duties of president and chief operating officer. All the sales executives that previously reported to Ray will report to Larry,'' she explained. The company said Lane's departure had nothing to do with news earlier last week that Oracle had hired a private detective agency to investigate allies and groups that support Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), the world's biggest software firm. Shilakes noted that while Lane and Ellison had their differences in the past, there was no recent talk of increased friction and the departure comes as a surprise, given Lane's participation and bullishness on the recent earnings call. The analyst, who continues to rate Oracle as a ``buy,'' also said that Lane had been helping the company to form Internet trade exchanges, such as Covisint with the Big Three automakers. ``We expect Oracle to act quickly to fill the chain of command, likely with an 'up and coming' senior exec such as George Roberts or Gary Bloom,'' the Merrill Lynch report said, referring, respectively, to the company's executive vice president of U.S. sales and its top marketer and executive vice president. Lane, who joined Oracle eight years ago from consulting company Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc., is widely credited with helping Oracle pull itself out of aggressive sales and accounting practices in the early 1990s that dragged down its stock price. Ellison, who founded Oracle in 1977, has been responsible for Oracle's overall strategic direction, but Lane had been lauded by Wall Street analysts for restoring Oracle's credibility with the investment community.