This summer, Larry Ellison was going to sell a big chunk of his stock in Oracle, the company he founded five decades ago. He wanted cash to help pay for his son David’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Instead, in the run-up to the merger’s completion, Ellison added to a multibillion-dollar borrowing spree. He put up shares in Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount as collateral, and increased his lending from five banks: Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan, UBS and BNP Paribas. In September, Oracle said Ellison scrapped a plan to sell roughly $7.5 billion worth of stock.
The borrowing let Ellison keep his stock and avoid locking in taxable gains, and highlighted how billionaires often employ a strategy called “buy, borrow and die” to retain their wealth without selling assets. Regulatory filings in California, the details of which haven’t previously been reported, shed light on the number of shares Ellison leveraged for lines of credit, and the banks that offered it to him.
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