Hurd makes $950,000 per year at Oracle

Mark Hurd, the former Hewlett-Packard executive that left the company under rough conditions, is now co-president of Oracle with a salary of $950,000 a year and has the possibility to gain up to $10 million bonus each year. Hurd will also get the option to buy 10 million Oracle shares soon after he starts to work at the company, and the option to buy five million shares each year for the next five years if he remains the employee of the company.

Hurd was recently hired by Oracle, one of the leading software companies, after his departure from HP after a scandalous investigation of his alleged harassment of a contractor and repeated violations of the company’s business conduct.

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, called HP’s letting go of Hurd a really bad personnel decision, comparable to the situation when Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple.

Although Oracle is mainly a software production company, it has made steps lately towards hardware production, thus invading HP’s market segment. HP is ready to sue because Hurd, by joining the competition, violates an exit agreement that was meant to prevent transferring HP’s trade secrets to the competitors. Larry Ellison considers the suit to be an act of revenge.