DOVER, Del. — A Delaware judge has ruled in favor of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in a shareholder lawsuit alleging that he coerced the technology company’s board into paying a grossly inflated price to acquire software company NetSuite Corp. in 2016.
The... DOVER, Del. — A Delaware judge has ruled in favor of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in a shareholder lawsuit alleging that he coerced the technology company’s board into paying a grossly inflated price to acquire software company NetSuite Corp. in 2016. The shareholders argued that the $9.3 billion deal should be subjected to a more rigorous “entire fairness” review because Ellison was both a controlling shareholder of Oracle ORCL at the time and owned almost 40% of shares in NetSuite, which he cofounded in 1998. The lawsuit alleges that Oracle overpaid for NetSuite by $3 billion.
Glasscock also acknowledged that, while it’s possible for minority stockholders to exercise control of “the corporate machinery” for their own benefit, such a scenario did not apply to Ellison, who is not a majority shareholder of Oracle.