ORCL stock is down nearly 3 percent this morning following a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a former Oracle Corp (ORCL) executive who claims upper management encouraged her to adjust sales figures.
In a complaint filed in US District Court in San Francisco, Svetlana Blackburn argued she was fired in retaliation for complaining about improper accounting practices in Oracle’s cloud services business. According to a Reuters report, Blackburn’s bosses instructed her to “fit square data into round holes” in order to make Oracle Cloud Services’ results look better.
The publication also says that the former senior finance manager claims she was instructed by upper management to add millions of dollars of accruals for expected business “with no concrete or foreseeable billing to support the numbers,” and said executives above her added accruals on their own.
The lawsuit also targets Oracle for allegedly violating the anti-retaliation provisions of the federal Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance and Dodd-Frank financial-reform laws. Blackburn seeks punitive damages, double back pay and other remedies.
Oracle rejected the allegations saying it intends to “vigorously defend the matter”.
Price action: Oracle shares recently declined to $39.27. The stock is up more than 10% this year and has fallen roughly 8% over the past 12 months.
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