I am hearing rumors that SEC is investigating Oracles cloud biz. This comes as no surprise...
Anyone hearing the same? Please share what you know and what you experienced while employed at the company.
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Internal "under cover" audit by the Oracle compliance & ethics or Jina L. Choi team from the SEC San Francisco Regional Office ?
Where are you based ? NAS ? EMEA ? APAC ?
I received an email about preserving information and that my laptop is on a legal hold. The reason mentioned is SEC inquiry into Cloud Services.
If nothing else the discussions on this board should have made the SEC aware of what's going on
"Speak Up Regarding Ethics or Compliance Related Concerns"
As part of the training, it was made clear that every employee is responsible for speaking up if there is a concern and, by extension, is "guilty" if they do not. That certainly does make it look as a move to scapegoat the field sales teams while protecting MH.
MH was fired from HP for unethical behavior and recently lied about upcoming layoffs during an interview on CNBC. Yet he is now the one delivering the compliance/ethics statement to employees and, in doing so, is setting up a defense for acting ethically. Oh, the irony!
I haven't heard the same.
If Oracle was under investigation, I'd have to wonder if IBM and Microsoft were also being reviewed. It seems that Oracle, IBM and Microsoft all are working to claim that their "Cloud" revenues are huge and that they are beating Amazon in the overall market. Part of that story is around how each company decides to define "Cloud" to their own advantage. While the marketing spin is difficult to cut through, it isn't surprising from any of these three corporations. The other part of how they claim revenue -- whether actual or ARR.
The area that I think would be interesting for the SEC to dig into is the sale of Cloud "credits". It seems to be the way that may enterprises like to buy -- in bulk, in sync with their own budgeting cycle and with the ability to obtain a better discount. There isn't anything really wrong with that, but where the SEC might want to look is whether these purchases are "real" revenue. From what I've heard, Oracle financially engineers deals to insert the credits even when the customer has no interest or intention of using them. I've also heard that Oracle isn't unique in this practice. The result is that Oracle can claim Cloud "revenue" to manipulate shareholder confidence and stock price, but it is really just shifting things around in the books. To the extend that this practice is, basically, a lie, is aimed at manipulating the stock market and that executives are making millions as they sell their stock options, if the SEC isn't investigating, they should be.
Rumors on internal audits for covering and keeping clean the top management,
This is the main reason that MH (and not SC) speaks on compliance and for the first time video himself and introduced the updated ethics manual last week, DD (General Counsel) "Speak Up Regarding Ethics or Compliance Related Concerns" and many other top executives emails communicating on "secure my a-- as I told my EMEA/APAC sales team to be compliance and winning by integrity...."
Lets watch for coming Q1 cloud biz deep dive
where's your source?