Asking Oracle Corp. who its finance chief should be has not always brought an easy answer.
Yesterday, Oracle named Jeffrey E. Epstein as executive vice president and CFO, and said that Safra A. Catz, one of its copresidents, will give up the finance chief role while remaining a president and a director.
Epstein, 52, will report to Catz and have responsibility for finance, the controller’s office, finance operations tax, treasury, real estate, investor relations, audit, and customer leasing, Oracle said in a regulatory filing. Epstein’s appointment as EVP is effective Sept. 8, with the CFO appointment effective on the first day after the 10-Q is filed for Oracle’s 2009 fiscal year.
From April 2007 through June of this year, Epstein was EVP and CFO of Oberon Media Inc., a privately held Internet game technology company and publisher. Before that, he was EVP and CFO of ADVO Inc., a direct mail media company.
Other previous jobs include serving as a director of business-to-business marketing firm Revonet Inc. in 2004 and 2005, and holding the posts of acting president ahd CEO for part of that time. He also was senior vice president and CEO of VNU’s Media Measurement and Information Group, with businesses that included Nielsen Media Research, from March 2002 untili December 2003.
According to the filing, Epstein will be employed “at-will,” and will receive an annual salary of $700,000, with a target fiscal-year bonus in 2009 of $1.2 million. A proposal will be submitted to the board’s compensation committee for Epsetin to receive an option to purchase 1 million shares of common, as well. The option will vest 25-percent each year beginning one year after the grant date.
After a long period of CFO stability under Jeff Henley, who is now chairman, Oracle had spate of turnovers — and some reported personality clashes — in the post in 2004 and 2005, when Harry You and later Gregory Maffei served short stints. Catz replaced Maffei in November 2005.