Oracle will pay Hurd $950,000 in base salary

Oracle Corp. plans to pay its newly appointed co-president, Mark V. Hurd, a base salary of $950,000 a year. The company also says the former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive, who was ousted by that company last month, was eligible for a fiscal 2011 bonus of as much as $10 million.

Oracle released the details of Hurd’s pay package in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

The biggest part of Hurd’s pay package will be the 10 million stock options Oracle plans to give him. The company said Hurd’s options will carry an exercise price equal to the market value of the shares on the date they are granted. While the filing did not offer a specific date, Oracle shares closed Wednesday at $24.14, which would value 10 millions shares at $241.4 million. If he stays with the company, Hurd will be given options to buy another 5 million shares each year for the next five years.

Oracle is not shy about handing out big salaries and bonuses.

Founder and CEO Larry Ellison, among the world’s richest people, drew a pay package worth roughly $70 million for the company’s most recent fiscal year, according to an Associated Press analysis of Oracle’s securities filings. It included a base salary of $250,000, a performance-based bonus of $6.5 million, stock options valued at $61.9 million and other perks totaling $1.5 million.

During HP’s most recent fiscal year, Hurd received a pay package valued at $24.2 million, according to an AP analysis. His base pay came to $1.3 million, with bonuses totaling $15.8 million and $6.6 million worth of restricted stock.

Hurd’s future at Oracle was complicated Tuesday when Hewlett-Packard sued Hurd to keep him out of his new job. HP is worried Hurd will use his knowledge of the company to give Oracle an unfair advantage. Lawsuits of that kind often end with a court ordering an executive to avoid certain parts of their new employer’s businesses.

Hurd resigned from HP last month after five years as the CEO. An investigation uncovered inaccurate expense reports related to Hurd’s outings with an actress and HP contractor who alleged that her work at HP dried up after she rebuffed Hurd’s advances.

Hurd’s move to Oracle has injected new friction into Oracle’s relationship with HP. The two companies have cooperated for years, with HP selling corporate servers and Oracle providing the software that helps organize the information stored on them. But Oracle, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., moved into direct competition with HP, based in Palo Alto, in the hardware business when it bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion last year.