Larry Ellison is taking his second baby public

Larry Ellison is taking his second technology baby, NetSuite, public on Dec 21st. Analysts believe NetSuite’s value could be more than $1 billion, Larry and his family set to retain more than half. So what is NetSuite anyway? It’s a maker of on-demand business management software for small to mid-sized businesses. At the moment NetSuite has more than 5,400 customers. It’s concentrating on companies with fewer than 1,000 employees-which is fast growing market, and faster growing than the large enterprise market that Oracle competes in.  Now you might say there’s an inherent conflict of interest here but this is interesting. Larry will transfer nearly all his 32 million shares he controls into a “lockbox” limited liability company, where they will remain as long as he is an Oracle director. This is said to be designed to avoid future conflicts of interests. And as to Larry’s reliability, well, believe me, Larry’s going nowhere. By all accounts he’s in excellent health and is still a highly motivated leader. Anyway, his shares in NetSuite won’t count toward the election of NetSuite directors, although they count if the company is put up for sale.  Will NetSuite eventually merge into Oracle? That’s an interesting question. Only time will tell.