In 1986, Oracle Corporation held its IPO (initial public offering), but some accounting issues helped wiped out the majority of the company’s market capitalization and Oracle teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. After a management shakeup and a product-cycle refresh, however, Oracle’s new products took the industry by storm, and by 1992 the company was the leader in the database-management realm.
Success continued, and as Ellison was Oracle’s largest shareholder, he became one of the wealthiest people on earth. Ellison set his sights on growth through acquisitions, and over the next several years gobbled up several companies, including PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems and Sun Microsystems, all of which helped Oracle reach a market cap of roughly $185 billion with more than 40,000 employees by 2014.