Larry Ellison Pledged Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount Shares in Borrowing Spree to Bankroll Son's Warner Bros. Bid, WSJ Reports
According to The Wall Street Journal on October 20, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison had planned this summer to sell a large chunk of his Oracle stock to help pay for his son David Ellison's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. Instead, in the run-up to the merger's completion, he expanded his borrowing, putting up shares in Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount as collateral and increasing his lending from five banks: Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan, UBS and BNP Paribas.
The Journal reported, citing regulatory filings in California that had not previously been reported, that the banks took liens over Ellison's stock collateral, including some 87 million Oracle shares covered by the filings. Oracle separately disclosed in September that Ellison has 413 million Oracle shares, worth around $58 billion, pledged to back his personal indebtedness, up from the 346 million shares disclosed a year earlier. Oracle also said in September that Ellison had scrapped a plan to sell roughly $7.5 billion worth of stock.
Borrowing against the shares let Ellison keep his stock and avoid locking in taxable gains, a strategy the Journal described as the buy, borrow and die approach often employed by billionaires. Forbes puts Ellison's total wealth at around $169 billion, based largely on his roughly 40% stake in Oracle, the bulk of which is not linked to his borrowing.
GSM previously reported that the Paramount Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, led by David Ellison, was completed this month, with Larry Ellison personally guaranteeing more than $40 billion of the financing.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Larry Ellison 2025年1月在白宫发言（资料图，已裁去画面底部字幕）。白宫官方图，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons 发布／Larry Ellison speaking at the White House, January 2025 (file photo, bottom subtitle band cropped). Official White House photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
