Oracle creates PR post to step up its presence in UK

Andrew Gordon and Jessica Nesbitt, PR Week UK, Wednesday, 18 June 2003, 12:00am,

Software giant Oracle is to boost its PR work and expand its presence in the UK by creating a new position based at the company’s UK HQ in Reading.

The new senior director of UK corporate comms’s primary responsibility will be to promote the firm’s products to UK businesses and government, as well as the public sector.

Oracle’s V-P of corporate communications for EMEA Gaye Hudson said the position was created to raise the profile of the company as a corporate citizen in the UK and to drive its products. ‘The UK is a critical element of Oracle,’ Hudson said .

Hudson said the company’s goals are to provide services and cost efficiency to their broad customer base.

Stacy Torman will leave her role as senior director of corporate comms in the company’s Caifornia HQ to temporarily fill the new post in September.

Torman told PRWeek sister title PRWeekUS that the creation of the position illustrates the UK market’s importance and Oracle’s commitment to increasing comms overseas.

Hudson said this is not the fist time the company has implanted a director from one part of the world to another. She said Torman worked

for Oracle in the Asia Pacific region, and in financial services, before becoming senior director of corporate communications in California.

Torman will hold the UK post for 18 months at most before returning to California. Oracle will then conduct an internal and external search to permanently fill the position.