SiliconBeat

Why is this man smiling? For a second year in a row, Oracle awarded its founder, chief executive and single largest shareholder, Larry Ellison, a mega-option grant good for 7 million shares, according to a regulatory filing Ellison made last week. The option, which vests over four years, has a strike price of $20.73 when it was awarded July 3. Last year’s option grant was valued at $50 million, according to the company’s proxy from September 2007. The value of the most recent grant has yet to be published.

Ellison, who sold 102.5 million Oracle shares worth $2.2 billion in the last year, continues to own 1.15 billion shares, which were worth $23.5 billion at Monday’s close.

The company also duplicated the 4-million-share option grant it gave last year to its president and chief financial officer, Safra Catz, pictured here. The 2007 grant was valued at $18.5 million. Catz, who entered into a trading plan drawn up under the SEC’s rule 10b5-1 in April, exercised and sold roughly a half million shares at the end of last month that netted her a $4.5 million profit.

A few of its named officers got bumps up in the size of their option grants this year compared to last, including Oracle president Charles Phillips, whose option grant rose by a third, or one million shares, to 4 million shares this year. Keith Block, an Oracle executive vice president of sales, saw his option grant this year grow by 88 percent, or 700,000 shares, to 1.5 million shares. And Charles Rozwat, an executive vice president for operations, received an option award that grew by two-thirds to 1 million shares, up from 600,000 shares the year before.