By
Nick Denton,
10:38 AM on Tue Jan 9 2007,
1,059 views


Turns out the story we floated last week —
that Larry Ellison had sold a share in his elephantine yacht to a fellow mogul, David Geffen — was true. The
Wall Street Journal reports that Geffen —
who made his fortune putting out records for artists as varied as John Lennon, Aerosmith and Cher — bought a half share in the Rising Sun for more than $125m. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, the database company, and California's richest man, is the most impulsive spender of all the tech moguls. He moves on to a new Japanese-style villa, or yacht,
even before he's sold the last; and
poured $30m into one of last year's Hollywood duds, in which his son happened to be a stunt pilot. But the Rising Sun was his
Xanadu: a vast floating palace, the world's second largest yacht, built at a cost of $250m, which, as Ellison discovered after a few days of sailing, was too large to dock where he wanted.