Billionaire Oracle CEO Larry Ellison doesn't expect the U.S. economy to significantly improve until halfway through the next decade – a gloomy scenario he dubbed an L-shaped recovery.

"The American consumer is so deeply in debt, this is not going to come back, certainly for five years," he told a packed ballroom at a Churchill Club event in San Jose. "I believe we're going through some fundamental changes." More

Strong first quarter earnings underscore the prowess of Oracle's Ellison.

Ellison is as engaged as he needs to be. Photo: Oracle

I spent most of the summer reporting and writing a feature story about Safra Catz, the enigmatic co-president of Oracle (ORCL).  I talked to oodles of people about Catz's ambitions, her value to the company, the likelihood of her becoming CEO, and her relationship with Charles Phillips, Oracle's other co-president.

All this is in the article, published in the current issue of Fortune. The conclusion is that Catz is a complicated, competent, intelligent pile-driver of an executive who makes Oracle hum.

Left explicitly unsaid in the quest to find out as much as possible about Safra Catz is just how successful her boss, Larry Ellison, has been as CEO of Oracle. This was my single greatest takeaway from my reporting.

There was a period, years ago, when Ellison became disengaged from actively running the company. Because his extracurricular activities get so much attention — the America's Cup battles, the yachts, the homes, the marriages, and so on — the world that watches Oracle from afar doesn't quite get that Ellison's era of disengagement ended a long time ago. More

She's CEO Larry Ellison's secretive but effective right hand, and one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley. But who is she, really?

Catz is yin to Ellison's yang. Photo: Jay Mallin, Bloomberg News

After months of on-again-off-again negotiations to sell itself to IBM, Sun Microsystems this spring found a new, if unlikely, suitor. Oracle, the business-software giant, in many ways promised to be a better fit for Sun, the beleaguered maker of server computers.

A Silicon Valley neighbor whose CEO, Larry Ellison, is pals with Sun chairman Scott McNealy, Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) posed less of an antitrust risk because it wasn't already selling hardware like IBM (IBM, Fortune 500).

But Oracle's all-cash offer of $9.50 per share, or $5.6 billion minus Sun's cash and debt, bested IBM's per-share bid by a mere 40 cents. So on the afternoon of Saturday, April 18, during a Sun board meeting called to pick a winner, CEO Jonathan Schwartz did what chief executives must do in such situations. He phoned Oracle to ask for more money.

He didn't call Ellison, his titular counterpart. Instead, he dialed Safra Catz, Oracle's president. Schwartz proposed a higher price, which, in the dry language of a subsequent securities filing, "Ms. Catz stated would not be acceptable to Oracle." Tail between its collective legs, Sun's board of directors accepted Oracle's final offer that weekend, informed IBM it was out of the game, and on Monday morning announced the shocker of a deal. Read the rest of the story here.

The shrinking of the tech sector threatens creativity and new thinking

By Christopher Lochhead, strategy advisor and former chief marketing officer, Mercury Interactive

Is Silicon Valley at risk of becoming Detroit 2.0 — a company town dominated by a handful of big, uninspired conglomerates?

Lochhead advocates a mix of innovation and consolidation

Consolidation is replacing innovation as the hot strategy. During his company's battle for PeopleSoft, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison declared that the software industry has entered  a "period of contraction and consolidation."  

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy: Oracle has gobbled up at least a dozen more companies since it closed the PeopleSoft deal in 2005, and a big purchase of Sun Microsystems is pending. And other companies widely are expected to follow Oracle's acquisitive ways.

More

Having topped Forbes' list of the U.S.'s highest-paid CEOs last year with a total compensation of $646 million — thanks almost entirely to restricted stock grants that vested in 2006 — Apple's (AAPL) $1-a-year CEO dropped to No. 120 this year. Total 2007 compensation: a mere $14.6 million.

Steve Jobs doesn't even make the magazine's list of the top 10 highest-paid tech CEOs. Oracle's (ORCL) Larry Ellison, America's highest-paid CEO, is also No. 1 on the tech list (total 2007 compensation: $192.9 million).

Among tech CEOs, Jobs came in at No. 11, despite the fact that his company is one of the most efficient in terms of return on investment, delivering 99.3% in fiscal year 2007, second only to MEMC (126.1%).

You can page slowly through pictures of the top 12 technology CEOs at Forbes.com (link), or take them in at a glance below:

1. Larry Ellison, Oracle: $192.9 million
2. Nabeeb Gareel, MEMC Electronic Materials: $79.6 million
3. John Chambers, Cisco: $54.8 million
4. Mark Hurd, HP: $27.6 million
5. Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA: $24.6 million
6. Samual Palmisano, IBM: $24.3 million
7. Wendell Weeks, Corning: $22.6 million
8. Joseph Tucci, EMC: $20 million
9. William Sullivan, Agilent: $17.4 million
10. Paul Otellini, Intel: $16.3 million
11. Steve Jobs, Apple: $14.6 million
12. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun: $13.5 million

Methodology: "Forbes compiled the list by calculating the overall compensation for the past year for executives, factoring in salary, cash bonuses, vested stock grants, stock gains and exercised stock options."