In re Oracle Corp. Derivative Litigation

• Citation: 824 A.2d 917
• Decision Date: 13 June 2003
• Docket Number: C.A.No. 18751.
• Parties: In re ORACLE CORP DERIVATIVE LITIGATION
• Court: Court of Chancery of Delaware

824 A.2d 917

In re ORACLE CORP DERIVATIVE LITIGATION

C.A.No. 18751.

Court of Chancery of Delaware, New Castle County.

Submitted: May 28, 2003.

Decided: June 13, 2003.

Revised: June 17, 2003.

Robert D. Goldberg, Esquire, Biggs & Battaglia, Wilmington, Delaware; Lee D. Rudy, Esquire and Robert B. Weiser, Esquire, Schiffrin & Barroway, LLP, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania; Samuel Rudman, Esquire and Douglas Wilens, Esquire, Cauley, Geller, Bowman & Rudman, LLP, Boca Raton, Florida, Attorneys for Plaintiffs.

Kenneth J. Nachbar, Esquire, Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, Wilmington, Delaware, Attorney for the Individual Defendants.

David C. McBride, Esquire, Adam W. Poff, Esquire, and Christian Douglas Wright, Esquire, Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP, Wilmington, Delaware; George M. Newcombe, Esquire and James G. Kreissman, Esquire, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP, Palo Alto, California, Attorneys for Nominal Defendant Oracle Corporation.

OPINION

STRINE, Vice Chancellor.

In this opinion, I address the motion of the special litigation committee ("SLC") of Oracle Corporation to terminate this action, "the Delaware Derivative Action," and other such actions pending in the name of Oracle against certain Oracle directors and officers. These actions allege that these Oracle directors engaged in insider trading while in possession of material, non-public information showing that Oracle would not meet the earnings guidance it gave to the market for the third quarter of Oracle's fiscal year 2001. The SLC bears the burden of persuasion on this motion and must convince me that there is no material issue of fact calling into doubt its independence. This requirement is set forth in Zapata Corp. v. Maldonado¹ and its progeny.²

The question of independence "turns on whether a director is, for any substantial reason, incapable of making a decision with only the best interests of the corporation in mind."³ That is, the independence test ultimately "focus[es] on impartiality and objectivity."⁴ In this case, the SLC has failed to demonstrate that no material factual question exists regarding its independence.

During discovery, it emerged that the two SLC members — both of whom are professors at Stanford University — are being asked to investigate fellow Oracle directors who have important ties to Stanford, too. Among the directors who are accused by the derivative plaintiffs of insider trading are: (1) another Stanford professor, who taught one of the SLC members when the SLC member was a Ph.D. candidate and who serves as a senior fellow and a steering committee member alongside that SLC member at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research or "SIEPR"; (2) a Stanford alumnus who has directed millions of dollars of contributions to Stanford during recent years, serves as Chair of SIEPR's Advisory Board and has a conference center named for him at SIEPR's facility, and has contributed nearly $600,000 to SIEPR and the Stanford Law School, both parts of Stanford with which one of the SLC members is closely affiliated; and (3) Oracle's CEO, who has made millions of dollars in donations to Stanford through a personal foundation and large donations indirectly through Oracle, and who was considering making donations of his $100 million house and $170 million for a scholarship program as late as August 2001, at around the same time period the SLC members were added to the Oracle board. Taken together, these and other facts cause me to harbor a reasonable doubt about the impartiality of the SLC.

It is no easy task to decide whether to accuse a fellow director of insider trading. For Oracle to compound that difficulty by requiring SLC members to consider accusing a fellow professor and two large benefactors of their university of conduct that is rightly considered a violation of criminal law was unnecessary and inconsistent with the concept of independence recognized by our law. The possibility that these extraneous considerations biased the inquiry of the SLC is too substantial for this court to ignore. I therefore deny the SLC's motion to terminate.

I. Factual Background

A. Summary of the Plaintiffs' Allegations

The Delaware Derivative Complaint centers on alleged insider trading by four members of Oracle's board of directors — Lawrence Ellison, Jeffrey Henley, Donald Lucas, and Michael Boskin (collectively, the "Trading Defendants"). Each of the Trading Defendants had a very different role at Oracle.

Ellison is Oracle's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and its largest stockholder, owning nearly twenty-five percent of Oracle's voting shares. By virtue of his ownership position, Ellison is one of the wealthiest men in America. By virtue of his managerial position, Ellison has regular access to a great deal of information about how Oracle is performing on a week-to-week basis.

Henley is Oracle's Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President, and a director of the corporation. Like Ellison, Henley has his finger on the pulse of Oracle's performance constantly.

Lucas is a director who chairs Oracle's Executive Committee and its Finance and Audit Committee. Although the plaintiffs allege that Lucas's positions gave him access to material, non-public information about the company, they do so cursorily. On the present record, it appears that Lucas did not receive copies of week-to-week projections or reports of actual results for the quarter to date. Rather, his committees primarily received historical financial data.

Boskin is a director, Chairman of the Compensation Committee, and a member of the Finance and Audit Committee. As with Lucas, Boskin's access to information was limited mostly to historical financials and did not include the week-to-week internal projections and revenue results that Ellison and Henley received.

According to the plaintiffs, each of these Trading Defendants possessed material, non-public information demonstrating that Oracle would fail to meet the earnings and revenue guidance it had provided to the market in December 2000. In that guidance, Henley projected—subject to many disclaimers, including the possibility that a softening economy would hamper Oracle's ability to achieve these results — that Oracle would earn 12 cents per share and generate revenues of over $2.9 billion in the third quarter of its fiscal year 2001 ("3Q FY 2001"). Oracle's 3Q FY 2001 ran from December 1, 2000 to February 28, 2001.

The plaintiffs allege that this guidance was materially misleading and became even more so as early results for the quarter came in. To start with, the plaintiffs assert that the guidance rested on an untenably rosy estimate of the performance of an important new Oracle product, its "Suite 1li" systems integration product that was designed to enable a business to run all of its information systems using a complete, integrated package of software with financial, manufacturing, sales, logistics, and other applications features that were "inter-operable." The reality, the plaintiffs contend, was that Suite 11i was riddled with bugs and not ready for prime time. As a result, Suite 11i was not in a position to make a material contribution to earnings growth.

In addition, the plaintiffs contend more generally that the Trading Defendants received material, non-public information that the sales growth for Oracle's other products was slowing in a significant way, which made the attainment of the earnings and revenue guidance extremely difficult. This information grew in depth as the quarter proceeded, as various sources of information that Oracle's top managers relied upon allegedly began to signal weakness in the company's revenues. These signals supposedly included a slowdown in the "pipeline" of large deals that Oracle hoped to close during the quarter and weak revenue growth in the first month of the quarter.

During the time when these disturbing signals were allegedly being sent, the Trading Defendants engaged in the following trades:

• On January 3, 2001, Lucas sold 150,000 shares of Oracle common stock at $30 per share, reaping proceeds of over $4.6 million. These sales constituted 17% of Lucas's Oracle holdings.

• On January 4, 2001, Henley sold one million shares of Oracle stock at approximately $32 per share, yielding over $32.3 million. These sales represented 7% of Henley's Oracle holdings.

• On January 17, 2001, Boskin sold 150,000 shares of Oracle stock at over $33 per share, generating in excess of $5 million. These sales were 16% of Boskin's Oracle holdings.

• From January 22 to January 31, 2001, Ellison sold over 29 million shares at prices above $30 per share, producing over $894 million. Despite the huge proceeds generated by these sales, they constituted the sale of only 2% of Ellison's Oracle holdings.

Into early to mid-February, Oracle allegedly continued to assure the market that it would meet its December guidance. Then, on March 1, 2001, the company announced that rather than posting 12 cents per share in quarterly earnings and 25% license revenue growth as projected, the company's earnings for the quarter would be 10 cents per share and license revenue growth only 6%. The stock market reacted swiftly and negatively to this news, with Oracle's share price dropping as low as $15.75 before closing at $16.88 — a 21% decline in one day. These prices were well below the above $30 per share prices at which the Trading Defendants sold in January 2001.

Oracle, through Ellison and Henley, attributed the adverse results to a general weakening in the economy, which led Oracle's customers to cut back sharply on purchases. Because (the company claimed) most of its sales close in the late days of quarters, the company did not become aware that it would miss its projections until shortly before the quarter closed. The reasons given by Ellison and Henley subjected them to sarcastic rejoinders from analysts, who noted that they had only recently suggested that Oracle was...