Safra A. Catz

CEO of Oracle

• Born: December 13, 1961
• Place of Birth: Holon, Israel

Primary Company/Organization: Oracle

Introduction

Safra A. Catz became president of Oracle Corporation, an enterprise software company, in 2004. In 2011, for the second time, she was named the company's chief financial officer as well. Generally considered the person most responsible for Oracle's financial performance, she became a member of the firm's board of directors in 2001. In 2008, she became a member of the board of directors for HSBC Holdings plc, one of the world's largest banking and financial services organizations. Fortunemagazine ranked her the eleventh most powerful woman in business in 2011, and Timeincluded her on its 2012 list of the ten most influential women in technology. With total compensation in 2011 of more than $42 million, she topped Fortune's list of the highest-paid women in business for that year. She became Oracle's chief executive officer in 2019 and was then considered a self-made billionaire.

Early Life

Safra Ada Catz was born in Holon, Israel, on December 13, 1961, the elder of two daughters born to Leonard Catz, a nuclear physicist, and his wife, Judith, a speech therapist and a Holocaust survivor. Leonard fought in the Six-Day War in June 1967; Judith and the couple's young daughters took refuge in an air-raid shelter. The Catz family immigrated to the United States the same year. Safra was six. Her father accepted a position with the physics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her mother worked in the Boston public school system. Catz graduated from Brookline High School, a public high school in Brookline, Massachusetts. She attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she was on the school's fencing team. In 1983, she graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in business. She remained at the University of Pennsylvania to attend law school, transferring to Harvard University for her final year. She received a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania's law school in 1986.

That year, in what Catz terms the best decision she ever made, she bypassed practicing law and chose instead to accept a job with Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, a global investment bank, which later merged with Credit Suisse First Boston. She represented clients such as Softbank, Symantec, and Oracle. She was not immediately recognized as one of the rising stars in investment banking, but she established a reputation for a willingness to work hard, a strong commitment to her clients, and persistence. By 1994, she was a senior vice president, and in 1997, she became managing director, a position she held until she left the company in 1999.

Life's Work

Recruited by Larry Ellison, Oracle's colorful chief executive officer (CEO), Catz, who was looking to cut back on the travel her work with Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette required, joined Oracle in April 1999 as senior vice president. Within months, she was named an executive vice president. An admitted numbers cruncher, Catz was concerned about Oracle's stalled margins. She thought the company was too fragmented and set about centralizing control. With little patience for those who were more interested in protecting their turf than in the company's welfare, she eliminated those unwilling to accept new policies. By the end of her first year at Oracle, the company had cut $1.2 billion from its operating expenses. Margins increased from 22 percent to 35 percent over the next year, and the increase continued climbing for the rest of the decade. In 2001, she was named to the board of directors, an indication of how quickly she had become a powerful player at Oracle.

On June 6, 2003, with Catz directing the moves, Oracle announced a takeover bid to acquire PeopleSoft, a human resources and business applications software company. Four days earlier, the acquisition of the J. D. Edwards Company made PeopleSoft the second-largest enterprise application software vendor. On June 13, PeopleSoft filed a lawsuit to block Oracle's takeover bid and claimed that Oracle had engaged in unfair trade practices. On January 12, 2004, Catz and Charles Phillips were named copresidents of Oracle. Almost exactly a month later, the U.S. Justice Department notified Oracle and PeopleSoft that the department's lawyers had recommended blocking the takeover on antitrust grounds. On February 26, 2004, the Department of Justice, joined by seven states, filed suit to block the takeover on antitrust grounds. Oracle rejected the usual response to the government's decision to block the takeover. Rather than withdrawing, the company prepared to fight. As Oracle's manager of mergers and acquisitions strategy, Catz devoted much of her time to the case. In September 2004, a federal judge, Vaughn R. Walker, ruled in favor of Oracle, stating that the plaintiffs had failed to prove that the merger violated antitrust laws. A month later the decision was echoed in one from the European Commission. In December 2004, after an eighteen-month battle, Oracle announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire PeopleSoft for approximately $10.3 billion. Oracle CEO Ellison praised Catz for overseeing the takeover from initial idea to final purchase.

Over the next six years, with Catz continuing as chief strategist for mergers and acquisitions, Oracle completed more than eighty acquisitions valued at more than $43 billion. It was her push to grow the company's hardware business that led to the purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2009. Within Oracle, she became known as the enforcer and gatekeeper of Ellison's ideas and the executive Ellison would most likely heed. In addition to serving as copresident, she assumed the role of chief financial officer (CFO) in April 2011, a position she had also held concurrently with her copresidency from 2005 to 2008. The promotion to CFO placed her in an elite company. Less than 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a woman in the CFO position. In June 2011, Catz reported the company's first $10 billion quarter.

When rumors that Oracle executive vice president Keith Block, head of North American sales since 2002, would be pushed out (following the disclosure of e-mail messages in which he savagely criticized Oracle's purchase of Sun and the management decisions of copresident Mark Hurd) sent the value of Oracle shares down, it was Catz, as CFO, who responded with a surprising early announcement that Oracle had an increase in net income that exceeded analysts' predictions. Almost immediately, the price of Oracle shares not only recovered but also rose by almost 3 percent.

Ellison on several occasions suggested that Catz was heir apparent to his office, but Catz herself persistently denied any desire to become CEO, evidently committed to her role as chief strategist in Oracle's aggressive efforts to consolidate the software industry. Oracle has had the reputation of eliminating executives who become too ambitious. Catz outlasted a number of Oracle executives who might have harbored thoughts of becoming CEO. In 2014, Catz and Hurd were promoted to co-CEOs, while Ellison remained with the company as chief technology officer and chair of its board of directors; Hurd later took a leave of absence, making Catz the sole CEO in 2019, a position she still hald as of 2024.

Intensely private by all accounts, she shuns the media spotlight, deflecting attention to Ellison. Insiders suggest that regardless of her title, Catz's greatest responsibility is putting in place the policies that Ellison sets. She rarely grants interviews and has been known to resist photo opportunities set up by her own company. Friends and colleagues are reluctant to comment on her.

Catz often hosts political fund-raisers, but she has shrewdly done so in a bipartisan manner. She was criticized for assisting President Donald Trump with his transition into office in 2016, and Trump reportedly approached her about a cabinet position. She did not end up leaving Oracle, however. In 2018, she accepted an appointment to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, and in 2022, she was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council by Alejandro Mayorkas.

Catz has also overseen Oracle's philanthropic efforts, and, in a rare moment of personal revelation, admitted at a Women's High-Tech Coalition conference held in May 2005 that women in the business world must be better—more persistent, harder working, and more aggressive than men—in order to succeed. By all accounts, Catz's financial acuity, professional discipline, and assertiveness have made her one of the most successful women in corporate America. Insiders acknowledge that she is a force to be reckoned with and that her day-to-day operational decisions have freed Ellison to spend a large part of his life away from Oracle's offices.

Personal Life

Catz is married to Gal Tirosh, a writer. They have two sons, Daniel and Jonathan. The family resides in Los Altos, California. Catz has described her husband as secure in his role as primary caretaker for their children, acknowledging that his being on call for their sons has contributed to her success. Her mother, whom Catz called her greatest inspiration, died of breast cancer in 2004. Her father retired from his position as chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Massachusetts–Boston in 2005. Her sister, Sarit, is a stand-up comedian and television writer/producer.

Catz served as a global ambassador for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation in 2009–10. She joined the board of directors for the Walt Disney Company in 2019. She has also lectured at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She has drawn on her experience with the merger and acquisitions deals on which she has advised during her more than two decades in business.

Bibliography

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Ghaffari, Elizabeth. “Ladder Climbers: The Corporate Path.” Outstanding in Their Field: How Women Corporate Directors Succeed. Santa Barbara: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2009. 165–77. Print.

Lashinsky, Adam. “The Enforcer.” Fortune 28 Sept. 2009: 116–24. Print.

Pfeffer, Jeffrey. “How—and Why—People Lose Power.” Power: Why Some People Have It—And Others Don't. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 198–12. Print.

Savitz, Eric J. "How Safra Catz Turned Oracle Into a Cloud Company and an AI Player." Barron's, 23 June 2023, www.barrons.com/articles/safra-catz-oracle-ceo-cloud-ai-853aedee. Accessed 7 Mar. 2024.

Symonds, Matthew. Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle. New York: Simon, 2004. Print.