Larry Ellison – Net Worth, Money and More
NET WORTH: $44 BILLION
PROFESSION: CEO OF ORACLE CORPORATION
For more than three and a half decades, Oracle has been the leader in database software. And with the enhanced technologies and acquiring best-in-class companies over the years, that leadership has expanded to the entire technology stack, from servers and storage, to database and middleware, through applications and into the cloud. It all happened when Lawrence Joseph Ellison, the founder of Oracle saw an opportunity other companies missed: a description of a working prototype for a relational database.
Net Worth
As of March 2010, the Forbes list of billionaires ranked Ellison as the sixth richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $28 billion, in September 2011, he was listed at the fifth position with a net worth of $36.5 billion, in September 2012, he was listed at the third position with a net worth of $44 billion. He is also the third richest American.
Mr. Larry Ellison is not only one of the world’s richest persons alive but is also one of the most flamboyant and outspoken of the lot. Other than the humongous amount of wealth that he has, Ellison is known as a quite multi faceted character: a brusque businessman, marketing genius. Owing to his voracious appetite for new estates, he has been tagged as the newest trophy buyer in the country.
The scores of properties he has includes
Two holdings in Woodside, California.
A hotel and two restaurants in Malibu along with two other homes. A 249-acre state in Palm Springs, which he got for $49 million and a garden property in Kyoto Japan worth at least $86 million.
Ellison has a penchant for adventures, sailing and outdoor sports that has cost him more than a few million dollars.
Ellison owns many exotic cars, including Audi R8 and McLaren F1. Ellison is also reportedly the owner of a Lexus LFA and a Lexus LS600hL.
Besides these, he also owns a magnificent motor yacht-Rising Sun, designed by Jon Bannenberg in the year 2004.
Early Life
Ellison was born on August 17, 1944 in Manhattan, New York, U.S.A. He is best known as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, an enterprise software company. Ellison was born to an unwed mother of Jewish heritage. His father was an Italian American US Air Force pilot. When he was just nine months, his mother gave him to be adopted by her aunt and uncle in Chicago. He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48. Ellison remembers his adoptive mother as warm and supportive.
Education Proficiency
Ellison graduated from Eugene Field Elementary School in Chicago and Sullivan High School. Ellison was a bright but inattentive student. He left the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign after his second year because his adoptive mother had just died. Ellison attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first runs into computer design.
Career
He follows a simple approach, “Buy the best, without compromise”.
During the 1970s, after a brief stint at Amdahi Corporation, Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation.
In 1977, Ellison and his two colleagues Robert Miner and Ed Oates found a company called “Software Development Labs”, where they came across a paper called “A Relational Model of Data for large Shared Data Banks”, which became the basis of their soon-to-found fortune.
In 1979, the company renamed itself “Relational Software Inc.” and in 1982 officially became “Oracle System Corporation” after its flagship product, the Oracle database. The initial release of Oracle was called “Oracle 2”; there was no “Oracle 1”.
Throughout its history, Oracle has proved it can build for the future on the foundation of its innovations and its knowledge of customer challenges and successful analyzed by the best technical and business minds in the world.
In 1997, Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer. Ellison resigned in 2002 saying that his schedule does not allow him to attend enough of the formal board meetings to warrant a role as a director.
As of 2013 Oracle’s main competition for new database systems come from IBM’s DB2 and from Microsoft SQL server, which only runs on windows. IBM’s DB2 still dominates the mainframe database market.
Ellison’s Stakes
Ellison owns stakes in Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Quark Biotechnology Inc. and Astex Pharmaceuticals. In June 2012, Ellison agreed to buy 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lana’I from David Mudrock’s company, Castle and Cooke. The price was reported to be between $500 million and $600 million.
Ellison purchased a 50% share of the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament.
Personal Life
Ellison has been married and divorced four times. He has two grown children, Megan and David, both dabbling in the movies business.
Ellison made a brief cameo appearance in the 2010 movie “Iron Man 2
A Cavalier business personality, he knows how to dress for occasions with his tailor made Italian suits and shirts making him look as if he was born to be a billionaire.
Steve Jobs was a good friend of Larry Ellison.
Other Interests
Larry Ellison has been Chief Executive Officer of Oracle Corporation since he founded the company in 1977. He also races sailboats, flies planes and plays tennis and guitar.
His Goodwill
In his quest for youth he has donated $445 million to his medical foundation to support research on aging and age-related disease.
Forbes 2004 list of charitable donations made by the wealthiest 400 Americans stated that Ellison had donated $ 151,092,103, about 1% of his estimated personal wealth.
In 2007, Ellison pledged $500,000 to fortify a community centre in Sderot after discovering that the building was not fortified from rocket attacks.
In August 2010, it was reported that Ellison is one of the 40 billionaires who has signed “The Giving Pledge”.
