Oracle‘s former CEO Mark Hurd has died, as first reported by CNBC and confirmed by ZDNet. The executive took a leave of absence from the enterprise software company in September due to unspecified health reasons, leaving the company in the hands of his then co-CEO Safra Catz, as well as co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison.
Hurd, 62, had served as Oracle’s co-CEO since 2014.
He came to Oracle from HP, where he served as CEO and president from 2006 to 2010. He brought stability to HP after the Carly Fiorina era and the company typically beat its quarterly benchmarks.
However, Hurd was known for cost cutting and scrimping on research and development. In August 2010, Hurd resigned as CEO after an investigation into violating HP’s code of conduct after claims from contractor Jodie Fisher. The investigation found that Hurd didn’t violate HP’s sexual harassment policy but did submit inaccurate expense reports.
Larry Ellison hired Hurd just weeks after HP ousted him over the sexual harassment probe. After defending Hurd to the New York Times, Ellison wasted no time putting his money where his mouth was, tapping Hurd to extend Oracle’s Exadata boxes and “beat IBM in both enterprise servers and storage.”
Prior to joining HP, Hurd was CEO at NCR for two years, but held numerous executive roles at the company.