Hurd Joins Oracle as Co-President

SAN FRANCISCO — In naming Mark V. Hurd, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, as Oracle’s new co-president, Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle’s chief executive and largest shareholder, has put his money where his controversial mouth is.

Late on Monday, Oracle announced that Mr. Hurd had joined the company as a president and a director. Mr. Hurd resigned from H.P. one month ago, after an investigation by the board into a personal relationship with a contractor turned up questionable expense reports.

Mr. Ellison, a personal friend of Mr. Hurd’s, criticized H.P.’s board last month in an e-mail message to The New York Times, saying it was “the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.”

Now, Oracle intends to capitalize on H.P.’s mistake, Mr. Ellison said.

“Mark did a brilliant job at H.P., and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” Mr. Ellison said in the statement. “There is no executive in the I.T. world with more relevant experience than Mark.”

Oracle already had a crowded management suite, with Charles E. Phillips Jr. and Safra A. Catz serving as co-presidents under Mr. Ellison.

Mr. Phillips, however, has resigned and given up his seat on the board, making room for Mr. Hurd.

In his statement, Mr. Ellison said that Mr. Phillips had asked to leave the company in December. “We will miss his talent and leadership, but I respect his decision,” Mr. Ellison said.

This year, Mr. Phillips acknowledged having an affair after a woman he had been seeing put up a Web site and billboards detailing his extramarital relationship.

Oracle’s decision to hire Mr. Hurd presents Silicon Valley with a true soap opera, filled with fierce business dealings and saucy relationships.

H.P. has long been one of Oracle’s largest partners in the business computing market. H.P. sells the computer servers and storage systems that customers use to run Oracle’s database software. But Oracle has just acquired Sun Microsystems, one of H.P.’s longtime rivals in the hardware market.

Mr. Hurd will bring his expertise running the largest computer hardware business on the planet to Oracle, where he may be able to revive the fortunes of Sun’s products at H.P.’s expense.

Oracle has, in particular, used Sun’s technology to build a new line of data warehousing systems that can sort through huge volumes of information like sales trends, pricing and inventory levels.

Before joining H.P. as its chief executive in 2005, Mr. Hurd was chief executive of NCR, which had the leading data warehousing technology.

Mr. Hurd also oversaw a number of large acquisitions at H.P., so he should feel right at home at Oracle, one of the most active buyers of companies in the technology industry.

“As Oracle continues to grow we need people experienced in operating a $100 billion business,” Ms. Catz said in a statement.

Oracle’s main database rival is I.B.M., which, like H.P., sells more than $100 billion in equipment and services a year.

Mr. Hurd arrived in Silicon Valley five years ago, seeking to prove himself as a chief executive on the biggest stage.

He succeeded in that respect by pushing H.P. past I.B.M. as the largest technology company and turning in some of the most consistent financial results in the industry.

But Mr. Hurd’s time at the top came crashing down after H.P.’s board began investigating sexual harassment claims presented by Jodie Fisher, a former contractor.

The company discovered that Mr. Hurd authorized paying Ms. Fisher, a 50-year-old former actress in sexually charged films who had also posed for Playboy in college, to attend gatherings with H.P.’s top customers.

H.P. found no evidence of sexual harassment, but said Mr. Hurd had tried to conceal a personal relationship with Ms. Fisher by removing her name from his expenses for meals.

Mr. Hurd settled with Ms. Fisher for an undisclosed sum and fought H.P.’s decision to make the sexual harassment claims public.

The senior ranks of Oracle, run by Mr. Ellison since he founded it 30 years ago, are anything but stable. Well-regarded executives like Ray Lane, now a managing partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Marc Benioff, now the chief executive of Salesforce.com, have left high-ranking positions at Oracle.

Their departures were often portrayed as a response to Mr. Ellison’s well-entrenched position as chief executive and his personality.

Ms. Catz will continue to oversee Oracle’s finance, legal and merger and acquisition operations, while Mr. Ellison will oversee engineering. Mr. Hurd will manage sales, marketing and software support.

In a statement, Mr. Hurd said he looked forward to tackling Oracle’s rivals: “I’m excited to be a part of the most innovative technology team in the I.T. industry.”