June 27 (Bloomberg) -- Oracle Corp. Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison won't fulfill a pledge to donate $100 million to Harvard University, having lost interest after Lawrence Summers resigned as president of the school, an Oracle spokesman said.

Ellison, 61, and Summers never signed an agreement for a donation to the School of Public Health, Oracle spokesman Bob Wynne said. Harvard pegged the 2004 pledge at $115 million.

``There was never a formal agreement between Larry Summers and Larry Ellison,'' Wynne said today in an interview. ``It was a discussion.''

Ellison will announce ``in the next few weeks'' which institution will receive the gift, Wynne said. Ellison, ranked the world's 15th richest man by Forbes magazine with an estimated net worth of $16 billion, originally offered the money to Harvard to set up a center to monitor global health, after Summers first brought up the idea, Wynne said.

``When Summers announced his resignation in February, it caused Larry Ellison to reconsider,'' Wynne said.

Summers, 51, a former U.S. Treasury secretary, in February said he would step down as Harvard president at the end of the school year in June and be replaced temporarily by former president Derek Bok.

The Financial Times on June 21 reported that the planned Ellison Institute for World Health, which was to employ 130 people by next summer, has been put on hold and three senior managers have been discharged.

Harvard Impact

``The key lesson here is that an organization should not move forward with a major program unless they have a signed agreement,'' Eugene Tempel, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, said in a telephone interview today. ``The fact that this pledge was made so public is bad for Harvard and Ellison.''

The loss of Ellison's gift probably won't have a significant impact on Harvard, which has an endowment of almost $26 billion, Tempel said. ``There's a difference between Harvard and your neighborhood social service organization,'' Tempel said. ``An organization like Harvard could risk putting this program in place without a signed agreement.''

Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.

Donor Rank

The Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2005 named Ellison the seventh most generous donor in the U.S. based on the Harvard pledge. Without it, he would have ranked 28th or lower.

Ellison first started talking to Harvard about a gift in May 2004, said Christopher Murray, a professor and director of the Harvard University Global Health Initiative.

Word of Ellison's reversal on the Harvard pledge comes a day after he announced plans to give $100 million to the Ellison Medical Foundation, which will funnel the funds to ``appropriate charities.''

That donation is unrelated to Harvard, Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said yesterday. The foundation gift is tied to a San Mateo, California Superior Court settlement reached in November, requiring Ellison to give $100 million to charities and pay $22 million in attorneys' fees to settle a shareholder lawsuit.

The Bethesda, Maryland-based foundation, which Ellison founded, will receive the full $100 million and then identify which charities will receive funds on Oracle's behalf.

The case stemmed from claims that Ellison improperly sold $900 million of Oracle shares in 2001, days before the Redwood City, California-based software maker reported earnings had missed forecasts.

Shares of Redwood City, California-based Oracle, the world's largest maker of database software, fell 17 cents to $14.50 today in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. They have gained 18 percent this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rochelle Garner in San Francisco at rgarner4@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 27, 2006 20:42 EDT