In the span of a single weekend, Larry Ellison announced and then abandoned a plan to sell $7.5 billion worth of Oracle shares — a reversal that speaks less to personal indecision than to the deepening friction between American and European financial regulation. The episode illustrates how global executives increasingly find themselves caught between two legal philosophies: one that permits pre-arranged sales as a shield against insider-trading accusations, and one that simply closes the window before earnings regardless of prior intent. For Ellison, who controls roughly 40 percent of Oracle,