Oracle's founder and chief executive thrives on hard work and interviews, writes Karlin Lillingtonin Valencia
If Larry Ellison, the tireless founder and chief executive of Oracle Corporation, is flummoxed by the recent poor showing of his Oracle BMW America's Cup sailing team in Valencia, he isn't showing it.
He strides out from the vast and immaculate interior of his yacht, Rising Sun - the second largest personal yacht in the world, idling off the Spanish coast - in shorts and T-shirt, looking relaxed. As always, he cuts to the chase: what do the gathered journalists want to know?
A good starting point is Agile - the company's latest acquisition, snapped up the previous day. Why did he go for it? "Agile operates in an area where we don't. It's a very interesting product that fits neatly into our portfolio."
That sets him off on why Oracle remains so focused on growth through acquisitions, having eaten up companies big and small in a serious spending spree, most famously, Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft. Three pages of acquisitions are listed in a briefing document.
"A lot of smart people are making acquisitions. It's cheap to borrow money. The signs, when equity capitalists are buying, indicate there's good bargains. Our margins haven't been compromised and we've grown our business."
That leads directly to a favourite topic, flaying German giant SAP, the rival that has replaced Microsoft in Oracle's crosshairs. "We feel we have to beat them in the overall application business. We need to go into specific businesses and beat them there."
Oracle's broad range of applications offer better value, he thinks, than SAP's more focused portfolio. "What is more valuable: a system that manages your accounting or that manages your business? I've never heard anyone say, 'Larry, the one thing that gives us a real advantage is our debit ledger [ program]'."
There can be few chief executives who enjoy doing interviews quite as much as Ellison. Sun's former chief executive, Scott McNealy, is just as adept at quips and banter, but Ellison visibly relishes questions, from the tough to the frivolous.
Perhaps part of his good humour is the fact that a new corporate structure has taken some of the direct burden of running a huge company with $14.8 billion (€11 billion) in revenue off his shoulders.
That has devolved to a new general manager job "that is really a mini CEO job".
"You don't have a mini-accounting division but other than that, you're running your own company. I think the structural decision was more important than some of the technical decisions I've made in the past."
Going into acquisition mode was another major shift. "I had to change my way of thinking. It's a lot easier to write cheques than write software."
He says he learned from looking at companies such as Cisco "paying top dollar to acquire technology. Also the environment changed. IPOs slowed and companies became more affordable."
And how is the company doing at digesting its acquisitions? "We think we have a pretty good track record of integrating successfully."
Ellison is well known for vocal opinions, too. One bee in his bonnet today is the rumbling in the EU about tax harmonisation. He singles out Ireland's "great" 12.5 per cent tax regime - Ireland has done spectacularly well, he says.
EU members are all sovereign nations. Who is the EU to force them into one high tax rate - something he thinks results in decreased revenue. "The idea is so bizarre." Other countries should instead consider lowering their tax rates to duplicate Ireland's success.
Who among global chief executives does he personally admire?
"I suppose the CEO I most admire is my best friend Steve Jobs [ of Apple]. I told him yesterday, he's not just CEO of the year, but CEO of the decade. I was going to buy Apple and he was going to take a quarter of it, but he felt the moral high ground was to return to Apple.
"I think what he's done there is just the beginning of the story. For quality of product and innovation, there's no one quite like him."
Who else? "In terms of innovation, Jack Welch [ of General Electric], John Chambers [ of Cisco] and more recently, my good friend Mark Hurd [ of Hewlett-Packard] - he's done a spectacular job in terms of operational excellence. They have all brought the right set of talents to the situations they came to."
Has success changed him? "Well, I have a bigger boat and I have better stuff." He laughs and pauses. "Do I think I've changed? I've gotten older. Of course the correct answer is to say, 'that's for other people to say', but no, I don't think I've changed."
Especially not in one area. Whether in business or in sailing, "I really do enjoy competing. How do you measure whether you are winning or losing? I think you need a competitor to measure yourself against. Right now, that's SAP. We'd like to eventually get bigger than SAP."
Has he thought about his successor? There are a couple of candidates, Ellison says. Does that mean he's thinking of stepping down any time soon?
He laughs. "I still enjoy what I'm doing, I think the company is doing well. I have no intention of retiring."
