Safra A. Catz (Hebrew: צפרא כץ, born December 1, 1961) is an Israeli-American billionaire banker and technology executive. She is the CEO of Oracle Corporation. She has been an executive at Oracle since April 1999, and a board member since 2001. In April 2011, she was named co-president and chief financial officer (CFO), reporting to founder Larry Ellison.[2] In September 2014, Oracle announced that Ellison would step down as CEO and that Mark Hurd and Catz had been named as joint CEOs.[3] In December 2019, Oracle stated that Catz would be the sole CEO after Hurd's death.[4]
Catz was a banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette,[11] serving as a managing director from February 1997 to March 1999 and a senior vice president from January 1994 to February 1997 and previously held various investment banking positions since 1986. In 1999, Catz joined Oracle as senior vice president. She has been a non-executive director of Oracle subsidiary Hyperion Solutions since April 2007.[12] She has been a member of the executive council of TechNet since March 2013. She was a director of PeopleSoft Inc since December 2004 and Stellent Inc. since December 2006.[13][14]
Catz joined Oracle Corporation in April 1999.[2] Catz became a member of the company's board of directors in October 2001 and president in early 2004.[2][15] She is credited for having driven Oracle's 2005 efforts to acquire software rival PeopleSoft in a $10.3 billion takeover.[11] Catz is also the company's CFO, serving temporarily in that role from November 2005 to September 2008, and from April 2011 to the present.[2] Mark Hurd joined her as co-president in 2010.[2] In December 2019, Oracle stated that Catz would be the sole CEO after Hurd's death.[4]
In 2009 she was ranked by Fortune as the 12th most powerful woman in business.[9] In 2009 she was ranked by Forbes as the 16th most powerful businesswoman.[16] In 2014, she was ranked 24th.[17] According to an Equilar analysis published by Fortune, she was in 2011 the highest-paid woman among Fortune 1000 companies, receiving an estimated US$51,695,742 in total remuneration.[18]
Catz is a lecturer in accounting at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.[19] Catz was a director of HSBC Group from 2008 to 2015.[20]
After the election of Donald Trump, Catz was one of several high-profile CEOs, including Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Bezos, invited to talk with the then president-elect about potentially taking up a position in the incoming administration.[21] According to Bloomberg, she was considered for the post of U.S. Trade Representative or Director of National Intelligence.[21]
Catz is the highest paid female CEO of any U.S. company as of April 2017, earning $40.9 million after a 23% drop in her total compensation relative to 2016.[22]
Catz was elected to the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in December 2017, effective February 2018.[23]
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company was formerly headquartered in Redwood Shores, California until December 2020 when it moved its headquarters to Texas.[7] The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products—particularly its own brands of database management systems. In 2020, Oracle was the second-largest software company by revenue and market capitalization.[8] The company also develops and builds tools for database development and systems of middle-tier software, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, Human Capital Management (HCM) software, customer relationship management (CRM) software, and supply chain management (SCM) software.[9]
