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18 Feb 2011 12:27

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Tech, U.S.: Obama meets with everyone TechCrunch cares about all at once

  • Finally. Most of the people we write about were in a single room last night, having alcohol together. Obama. Mark Zuckerberg. The Twitter guy. Steve Jobs. And if you’re stretching it, that @$$hole Larry Ellison. If a nuclear bomb hit this restaurant last night, we would have nothing to write about and would probably have to shut down the blog. We’re glad it wasn’t. source

09 Nov 2010 10:06

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Biz, Tech: Oracle, new HP CEO Leo Apotheker dealing with some stuff

  • Oracle’s Larry Ellison really dislikes HP, apparently. First, he swiped their former chief executive, who was not only good at his job, but was removed for fairly questionable reasons. (HP didn’t like that, by the way.) Now, Ellison’s company has their sights set on their new CEO, Leo Apotheker, the weirdly hired former SAP CEO. See, a subsidiary of SAP, TomorrowNow, reportedly engaged in software theft from Oracle. Oracle thinks SAP owes them billions of dollars; SAP claims it’s closer to tens of millions. Either way, Oracle has hired a private investigator to find Apotheker after HP would not accept Oracle’s subpoena for Apotheker to testify in court about the case (and Apotheker skipped an earlier trial). In other news, Silicon Valley business is pretty cutthroat. (Above: Artist’s depiction of what we think the private investigator looks like.) source

08 Sep 2010 10:56

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Tech: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to HP: What’s up with this lawsuit?

  • The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.
  • Oracle CEO Larry Ellison • Responding to the lawsuit the company filed against Mark Hurd, the dude he’s trying to hire as his new president. Ellison notes that before now, the relationship between the two companies has been positive. In other news, the lawsuit and new job could affect Hurd’s $35 million severance plan. source

06 Sep 2010 20:52

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Tech: Mark Hurd rises from the tech-exec ashes like a phoenix

  • downfall Mark Hurd had a relationship with an underling and that led to his firing from HP. The circumstances raised eyebrows.
  • rise Hurd showed up at Oracle this week as their new co-president, just in time to screw Google over with that Java lawsuit. source
  • » He’s got a powerful backer, too: Last month, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s CEO, referred to Hurd’s ouster as “the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.” So, to prove it, he hired Hurd.

14 Aug 2009 11:07

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Biz, U.S.: Need twenty bucks? Ask these super-rich guys for a loan

  • $702.4 million the amount Blackstone Group LP’s Stephen Schwarzman, made last year, largely from the vesting of equity grants
  • $557 million the amount Oracle’s Larry Ellison, made largely from exercising stock options; both are hot-shot company founders source