Larry Ellison in Pictures: It’s Good to Be The King

The charmed life of Larry Ellison wasn’t always caviar and megayachts. The famously competitive Oracle CEO was first abandoned by his mother, then a college dropout and a wannabe database engineer with not much cash to his name. “I had all the disadvantages required for success,” Ellison once said. Today, the 65-year-old self-made billionaire has a lifestyle of the rich and famous—and we’ve got the pictures, rankings and details to show you just how rich. Larry knows luxury, and “little” is not part of his lexicon.

OK, so he’s worth $28 billion. So what does Ellison’s “portfolio” look like? A sampling: Annual salary from Oracle: $4.59 million. He owns more than 20 percent of Oracle, and his shares have increased 70 percent in value during the past year. The ultimate “have my cake and eat it, too” holding: Ellison owns a 52 percent stake in SaaS ERP vendor NetSuite—a rising business apps competitor—and those shares are worth $480 million. Larry does have to be careful with his personal finances, though: E-mails from Ellison’s nervous accountant, revealed in 2006, show that Larry’s not afraid of “runaway” spending. “I’m worried, Larry,” the accountant wrote to him, in a 2002 e-mail. “I think it’s imperative that we start to budget and plan.” Larry on a budget?!

Oracle’s Redwood Shores HQ, one of the most iconic images in Silicon Valley, is known as “LarryLand.” The tranquil body of water, which creates peace and harmony for those employees toiling away in the shimmering towers surrounding it, is affectionately known as “Larry’s Lagoon.” Ahh-hhhhh.

Sure he’s got tons of money, but Ellison has given away millions to charity. For instance, Ellison recently donated $1 million to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief Fund. But his philanthropic ways don’t always end with smiling photo-ops: Ellison pledged $115 million to Harvard University and then in 2006 rescinded the offer once president Lawrence Summers (Ellison’s pal) was booted from his Harvard job. (Like Harvard really needed it, anyway.) Any of Larry’s subjects, er, pals, will tell you there’s one thing he likes as much as money: Control.