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Larry Ellison Buys Most of Lanai
- ryanwaggoner 14y agoThis one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai
- rudyfink 14y agohttp://goo.gl/maps/wHTS http://goo.gl/maps/wHTS - Google Maps
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jpeg_hero 14y agoWhy is Ellison the only billionaire that does the type of things that kids say when they say: > You know what I'd do if I had a billion dollars....
- planetguy 14y agoRichard Branson, Elon Musk. Even Larry, Sergey and Eric recently acquired a fighter jet. Then you've got Silvio Berlusconi, who bought himself the Prime Ministership of Italy and spent the whole time having what he called "Bunga Bunga Parties", which is closer to my fantasy at sixteen than my fantasy at nine, but it'll do.
- toyg 14y agoActually Silvio was "forced" into politics by the demise of his protector, Bettino Craxi (who, incidentally, was instrumental in engineering Silvio's rise to riches). He was into bunga-bunga before, he just carried on despite his 70+ years. His "billionaire behaviour" was more about buying or building outrageous McMansions around the country, which is typical of his original background (a property developer with shady links to the mafia).
- beedogs 14y agoBecause he's kind of immature, like a kid.
- kamakazizuru 14y agoWhy is wanting to have his own Island immature?
- nodata 14y agoHeard of Richard Branson? He has. He also owns Necker island.
- darylteo 14y agoCould he technically start a new country? XD
- sp332 14y agoHistorically, secession from the union is frowned upon. See: the bloodiest war in US history. On the other hand, my former employer Dean Kamen did jokingly found his own country on North Dumpling Island and signed a non-aggression pact. He seceded when he was denied a permit to build a wind turbine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dumpling_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dumpling_Island
- planetguy 14y agoIf that's a legal question then no, no more than I can secede along with my backyard. The fact that your land happens to be surrounded by water doesn't give it any special legal status, the law of the United States does not allow landowners to secede. If that's a practical question, then all he has to do is to declare independence and then be prepared to win a war against the United States when it chooses to militarily dispute that claim. As Larry Ellison is unlikely to be able to win a war against the United States, I'd say the answer here is also no.
- wheels 14y agoHere's the web cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hawaii.gov/gov/newsroom/press-releases/governor-statement-on-lanai-sale&hl=de&prmd=imvns&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hawaii....
- GigabyteCoin 14y agoThis is all it really says: HONOLULU – Landowner Castle & Cooke has filed a transfer application with the Public Utilities Commission. Castle & Cooke owns 98 percent of the island’s 141 square miles. The buyer is Lawrence Ellison, co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation. Governor Neil Abercrombie today released the following statement: “It is my understanding that Mr. Ellison has had a long standing interest in Lana'i. His passion for nature, particularly the ocean is well known specifically in the realm of America’s Cup sailing. He is also a businessman whose record of community involvement in medical research and education causes is equally notable. “We look forward to welcoming Mr. Ellison in the near future.”
- Angostura 14y agoAnyone know who owns the remaining 2% and whether this places any restrictions on what Larry can and can't do with the island?
- hdctambien 14y agoIt looks like there is a town on the island. I would guess that he doesn't own that land.
- powertower 14y agoI wonder if it would be legal for him to erect a 20' high electric fence (with barbed wire on top) around the lands of the town, so they can't get out on his property.
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- draggnar 14y agoThe guy he bought it from, who was once homeless and destitute: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Murdock#section_1 http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Murdock#section_1
- jdh 14y agoWhat a great American dream story. How tragic the death of most of his children, I'd bet he'd trade the $B to change that.
- jquery 14y agoWhy the hell is it even for sale?
- _delirium 14y agoAlmost all the property on the island was acquired by Dole as a pineapple plantation back in Ye Olden Days when it was easy for Dole to do that sort of thing (1920s), and somehow the property has never gotten broken up in the decades since then, so Ellison just bought it from the til-now-current owner, who owns it via a chain of purchases from Dole and subsidiaries.
- jquery 14y agoThanks for the explanation. This is a vivid demonstration of wealth concentration writ large, maybe it will wake people up.
- todayiamme 14y ago...and why is that wrong? --- Meta Comment This isn't a post about any economic theory or about debating the morality of the fixed pie fallacy. It's about knee-jerk moralistic responses to complex phenomena. It's just weird to see such things pop up on HN these days. It goes against the spirit of this community (satisfying intellectual curiosity) because even though a knee jerk reaction has its place, it can't help you find the answers. It just muddies up the waters.
- afterburner 14y agoWealth concentration? The issue is that it turns out bad for the vast majority of people.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- derrida 14y ago
- kleiba 14y agoMr. Ellison [...] is also a businessman whose record of community involvement in medical research and education causes is equally notable. Hear, hear.
- thechut 14y agoWhat exactly does "community involvement in medical research" mean?
- jfoutz 14y agoAs much as i would like to say it means he performs experiments on orphans in a super villain like way, i'm pretty sure they're referring to this http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/ http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/ And actually, the orphan thing is more of a reddit joke. I'm sure Mr. Ellison is a pretty amazing guy.
- falling 14y agohttp://www.ellisonfoundation.org/ http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/
- planetoftheapes 14y agoWouldn't it be great if he created a startup accelerator there?
- excuse-me 14y agoEllison is buying his own volcano island? Watch out if he installs a monorail and buys a white cat !
- sneak 14y agoIt's the beard, isn't it?
- waterlesscloud 14y agoI would love to own the other 2%.
- uvdiv 14y agoHe just wouldn't be a proper Bond villain without a volcanic island lair.
- magicofpi 14y agoI should point out that, although Lanai was formed millions of years ago by a volcano, there aren't actually any active volcanoes on that island. The only active ones are on the Big Island (also known as Hawaii). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Hawaiian_volcanoes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Hawaiian_volcanoes
- nicholassmith 14y agoThere's always someone coming in with facts that ruins the wonderful ideas. I'm going to pretend it is an active volcano and Larry Ellison is actually Hank Scorpio.
- yolesaber 14y agoLarry Ellison is not a good enough boss to be Hank Scorpio.
- technoslut 14y agoOh, come on! I love this guy because only he would do something this crazy (if you don't include Eric Clapton). He may not always be right but it was amusing to watch Apotheker travel the earth to avoid a subpoena.
- badusername 14y agoHow much did he buy it for? I'd think a couple billion, at least.
- planetguy 14y agoAnother article says that the asking price had been previously reported as between 0.5 and 0.6 billion. Let's keep this in perspective. It may have a nice view, but it's only ninety thousand acres. That wouldn't even put him in the top hundred landholders in the US. Fun fact: Nicole Kidman's family owns twenty-two million acres of land.
- gbhn 14y agoInteresting! Check out http://www.landreport.com/americas-100-largest-landowners/ http://www.landreport.com/americas-100-largest-landowners/ for the U.S. Largest is John Malone: 2.2M acres in Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoInterestingly, this report shows that 90,000 acres would put him in the running for top 100 landowners in the US. http://208.106.193.21/documents/property_pdfs/Top100Landowners.pdf http://208.106.193.21/documents/property_pdfs/Top100Landowne... The list Jeff Bezos as #27 with 290,000 acres. Huh.
- philwelch 14y agoThe list is by acreage and not value, though. Which makes Bezos' position on the list pretty funny, since the neighborhood Amazon is based in--South Lake Union--is owned by Paul Allen.
- rexreed 14y agoAccording to the article here, the asking price was $500-$600 Million. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/20/national/a193724D96.DTL http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/20/...
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- citricsquid 14y agoWould this mean that he becomes the "ruler" of the island. I don't see it mentioned on the wikipedia page, does the island have any form of government or do the residents control everything? That also raises the question can he remove people from the island? I would assume that the condition of the sale means that people can't just be evicted/deported (not sure the correct term here) but maybe not.
- planetguy 14y agoHe just owns some land. The fact that the land happens to be on an island doesn't make it any different to the position of any other landholder. He doesn't even have his own county -- the land is in Maui County.
- citricsquid 14y agoSo to do anything on the island (eg: build a house, create a road, build an underground bunker...) he would need to get permission from the Maui County government? Thanks for the info re: Maui, I skipped over the part where it's part of the united states.
- gonzo 14y agoTechnically Maui is both a city (the whole island) and county (Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Kahoolawe) and no, I didn't put the okina(s) in. Fuck that noise.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kamechan 14y agoyou know it was more work to type "and no, I didn't put the okina(s) in. Fuck that noise." than to put the okina(s) in, right?
- planetguy 14y agoPerhaps, but he wouldn't have had a chance to protest about the stupid ongoing attempt to incorporate a pointless, one-use extra character into the English language. The Hawaiian language has never had a written form apart from the English alphabet, so why they think they can go round sticking new characters into it is beyond me. I already know how to pronounce "Hawaii", you don't need a freaking apostrophe in there to remind me.
- tptacek 14y agoWhat?! NO FAIR. Nobody told me it was for sale!
- excuse-me 14y agoWell for a mere $75m you can have a Canadian one http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/06/05/bc-island-for-sale.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/06... Not quite as hot or sunny but the scenery is nicer and you are surrounded by Canadians!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- huhtenberg 14y agoAh, this must be "the island owned by an American gentleman" as it was called by our BnB host on a neighbor island, followed by a warning not to try and dock there.
- jonah 14y agoThe seller, Craig McCaw just spent $35m on a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO[1] and his ex-wife lives a couple streets over from me. [1] http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/02/1962-ferrari-250-gto-made-for-stirling-moss-becomes-worlds-most/ http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/02/1962-ferrari-250-gto-made...
- rmckayfleming 14y agoNice car, awful colour.
- ChrisGammell 14y agoWhen I was in Hawaii back in February, one of the cabbies thought it was going to be Bill Gates who might buy it because he had gotten married there. That's a damn shame.
- wavephorm 14y agoCurrent owner retains right to build a wind farm to power Oahu through an undersea cable: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/20/national/a193724D96.DTL http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/20/...
- rexreed 14y agoLanai also happens to be the island where Bill Gates got married. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana%27i#Tourism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana%27i#Tourism
- GigabyteCoin 14y agoA new business venture for Ellison, perhaps?
- mikezupan 14y agoIn other news.. Oracle increases licensing fees to charge per mhz.
- suresk 14y agoJust so long as he promises to film a video montage of him enjoying it and presents it to us during a keynote at OpenWorld/JavaOne, like he does with his yacht.
- rdl 14y agoFrom an environmental perspective, a single landowner like this, who isn't going to put it to intensive development or use, is probably the best thing which could happen to a place like Lanai, other than becoming a park or nature preserve of some sort.
- GigabyteCoin 14y agoThe only real downside to a single landowner vs a national park is that nobody else gets to enjoy the beauty of the area. - A hiker
- protomyth 14y agoThere is quite a bit of national park areas that do not allow humans, many in the pacific.
- tomsaffell 14y agoI didn't know that. Where? Please post links.
- brandnewlow 14y agoCongrats! What are you doing on HN? :)
- acheron 14y agoStart here. http://www.papahanaumokuakea.gov/about/welcome.html http://www.papahanaumokuakea.gov/about/welcome.html You can get a "recreation permit" for one small part of the area (Midway Atoll), so the entire area is not closed off, but for the most part it's all "protected". There are more, but I assume you know how to use Google?
- GigabyteCoin 14y agoTrue, but nobody really lives within proximity of them to have any reason to open them up to the public. If they did, it would probably become poacher central because nobody would be there to stop them. (Come to think of it, maybe it is like that right now, who knows?)
- ilaksh 14y agoI don't care what people think Ellison has accomplished, no one should get to have their own island when we have so many starving homeless people. Its amazing to me that its so easy for people to justify that. Larry Ellison is a crook, an asshole, and a liability to the technology community. Oracle is a scam. But then again, so are most things in this so-called 'civilization'.
- at-fates-hands 14y agoLooks like he now has a place to swim with the dolphins and Marc Benioff now.
- damoncali 14y agoI once read that Ellison had very little wealth outside of his Oracle holdings. In fact, that he had borrowed against his stock in order to make the vast majority of his enormous purchases. Does that mean there will be one hell of a fire sale in Hawaii should Oracle hit the skids? And what sort of mind must one have to borrow upwards of a billion dollars rather than just sell some shares?
- caladri 14y agoIt's a common financial strategy among the fabulously-wealthy. Selling shares would incur all kinds of taxes, but he can get a line of credit with a reasonable interest rate quite easily, pay no income taxes, and actually deduct the interest he pays from his taxes. So he carries a lot of debt but it's all backed by assets and paying the interest is tolerable. Yes, if that's what he's doing, then in the event that his assets utterly evaporate he'll be in a spot of bother. But it's a pretty well-trod path, and probably some non-trivial portion of his assets are quite stable and reliable and not terribly volatile. I won't pretend to know the precise details of his situation, but living off a line of credit isn't at all uncommon and perhaps isn't even unreasonable (from the perspective of financial self-interest alone) for a person in his position.
- damoncali 14y agoFunny, though - Were I in his position, I'd just sell the stock, pay the taxes and own whatever it was I wanted to own. Perhaps that says something about why I am not in his position.
- ajb 14y agoWhat caladri says, plus it's possible to limit the potential loss by the use of derivatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collar_%28finance%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collar_%28finance%29
- adventureful 14y agoEllison currently yields $300x million per year just in dividends from his Oracle stake. I'd say he's cash flowin' just fine. Fun side fact: Steve Ballmer earns nearly half a billion dollars every year from dividends via his Microsoft stake.
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- shellox 14y agoI thought HN is a site for news which are interesting for hacker and computer fanatics. Turned out that information, which would better fit in a boulevard magazin, are also published here.
- Arare 14y agoWelcome to the new HN where people whom have worked there entire lives aren't entitled to the money they've earned (we are the 99% xD Anarchism ftw down with government! =^_^=) and every article has to have at least 10 posts sucking Google's cock. Enjoy your stay.
- mtgx 14y agoGood compensation reward after losing the trial with Google, I guess.
- nicholassmith 14y agoLets be honest, if you'd just lost a very public scrap with Google wouldn't you want to buy yourself something nice to take your mind off it?
- idleloops 14y agoWho has land rights to a brand new volcanic island?
- superchase 14y agoSomething's wrong when one man can buy up a sizable portion of an entire state. Also, Larry Ellison is stealing the ancestral homelands of the Native Hawaiian people. This sale should be blocked, and the land re-distributed among the people of Hawaii. AT very least, sold to hundreds of buyers, not one. This is just one more example of cannibalistic unbridled capitalism at its finest, devouring all that it can because it can. Mr. Ellison, give the land back to the rightful owners of Hawaii, the aboriginal peoples there. It's not yours.