Oracle Corp. chief executive officer Larry Ellison and chairman and chief financial officer Jeff Henley each plans to sell large stakes in the software giant over a period of time. The scheduling will allow the two insiders to sell their shares gradually, to reduce market impact and avoid concerns about whether they had material, non-public information when they sold their stock.
Over the next year or so, Ellison plans to sell up to 120 million shares and donate up to an additional 3.3 million shares to the Ellison Medical Foundation. Some of these shares will be acquired through the exercise of stock options, including options that are set to expire on their 10-year anniversary in May 2004.
After all of the planned sales, Ellison would still own about 1.273 billion shares, or 24 percent of Oracle’s outstanding stock.
Henley plans to sell up to 3 million shares over a period of approximately six months. These shares will be acquired through the exercise of employee stock options. Assuming he sells all 3 million shares, Henley would beneficially own about 11.6 million shares of Oracle’s stock.
The transactions under these plans will begin no earlier than March 2004.
At the end of last year Henley made more than $5.3 million from exercising and quickly selling more than 500,000 stock options.