As he steps down, Larry Ellison's titanic moments
SAN FRANCISCO — In the summer of 2013, Oracle Team USA's sleek multimillion-dollar America's Cup yacht was all but dead in the bay.
And then came the miracle on water: Despite tremendous odds, Oracle's crack crew overcame Emirates Team New Zealand to clinch the coveted silver trophy.
While wind, tactics and helmsmanship played a role, it would be easy to think that Oracle founder Larry Ellison — who stepped down as his company's CEO Thursday to become chairman and CTO — simply willed the win into existence, such is the force of his titanic personality.
A highlight reel of Ellison's various personal and professional outbursts, declarations and observations would invariably include snipes at the likes of Apple, HP and SAP, buzzing fellow sailing competitors with his aircraft and buying a private Hawaiian island just because he could.
Consider that:
• In 2000, when rival Microsoft was under federal investigation for antitrust practices, Ellison paid private snoops to dig around the trash of a company thought to be working for Gates' tech giant, in an effort to put his rival in a bad light.
According to Mike Wilson's 2003 book The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison, the CEO remarked, "I feel very good about what we did … we got the truth out."
• In the past decade, Ellison hasn't been shy about spending money on his home. OK, his homes. But you can do that when you're worth $48 billion. For starters, he dropped some $200 million on various lots and properties on tony Carbon Beach in Malibu.
Then there was his $500 million purchase in 2012 of the island of Lanai, a former pineapple plantation that boasts not one but two Four Seasons hotels. Ellison has said that he wants to turn the island into a test bed of various eco-conscious technologies.
• A longtime tennis buff, Ellison decided in 2010 to buy the BNP Paribas tournament in Indian Wells, Calif., outside Palm Springs. He promptly pumped up the purse by $1.6 million.
That move irritated rival tournament bosses but cemented close friends with tennis legends. Said Rafael Nadal, who often stays at Ellison's sprawling area compound, "It means a lot for me, and especially for tennis, to have somebody like Larry who is supporting our sport." Advantage Ellison.
• Marriage for Ellison has been a blood sport of sorts. Four times at the altar, four times signing divorce papers, the latest to unwind his seven-year relationship, in 2010, with romance novelist Melanie Craft.
• His other passions include cars, planes and boats. A longtime fan of the Acura NSX sports car, Ellison has been known to hand the wedge-shaped sports car out as bonuses to his workers. His own collection also includes an Audi R8 and McLaren F1.
Beyond his passion for competitive sailing, Ellison's private yachts have included the gargantuan (500-foot-long) Rising Sun, whose name reflects Ellison's longtime passion for Japanese culture. Costing an estimated $200 million, he sold the remaining shares in the yacht to entertainment mogul David Geffen in 2010, downsizing as it were to the 290-foot Musashi.
His planes range from a Gulfstream V to a Marchetti military jet, in which the licensed pilot takes to the skies often. Some years ago, Ellison won a Caribbean boat race and decided to celebrate by flying over his defeated rivals' boats almost at mast height. "It was an incredibly adolescent and immature thing to do," Ellison told Vanity Fair in a 1997 profile, "and I highly recommend it."
• If Ellison's brash attitude sounds familiar, it — and his famous facial hair — found a doppelganger in the cinematic version of Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark is just as brilliant and irritating and compelling as Ellison, which is perhaps why Ellison himself was asked to make a cameo in 2010's Iron Man 2.
His line to Stark? "Call me." No doubt Iron Man would.
