Billionaire put up Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX, Paramount shares to raise cash
By Margot Patrick
This summer, Larry Ellison was going to sell a big chunk of his stock in Oracle, the company he founded five decades ago. He wanted cash to help pay for his son David's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Instead, in the run-up to the merger's completion, Ellison added to a multibillion-dollar borrowing spree. He put up shares in Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount as collateral, and increased his lending from five banks: Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan, UBS and BNP Paribas. In September, Oracle said Ellison scrapped a plan to sell roughly $7.5 billion worth of stock.
The borrowing let Ellison keep his stock and avoid locking in taxable gains, and highlighted how billionaires often employ a strategy called "buy, borrow and die" to retain their wealth without selling assets. Regulatory filings in California, the details of which haven't previously been reported, shed light on the number of shares Ellison leveraged for lines of credit, and the banks that offered it to him.
Ellison is one of the biggest single borrowers in the world. Oracle in September separately said Ellison has 413 million shares worth around $58 billion pledged to back his personal indebtedness, without giving specifics. The stock he has pledged for borrowing rose from 346 million shares the last time Oracle disclosed it a year earlier. Forbes puts his total wealth at around $169 billion, largely based on his total 40% share of Oracle, the bulk of which isn't linked to his borrowing.
The California filings, made by banks taking liens over stock collateral, offer a glimpse at part of the increased borrowing as Ellison committed to backstop billions to get the Warner deal over the finish line.
The banks that disclosed the amount of Oracle stock they had security over reported 87 million shares, up from around 30 million a year ago, according to the filings. It wasn't clear exactly how much cash Ellison borrowed, but market researchers and private bankers said that loans backed by a very liquid stock such as Oracle would typically be for around half the market value at the time of the loan. That means 87 million shares, at their current price, could equal $5.7 billion to spend.
The 50% rough rule of thumb likely would be subject to additional discounts for size and concentration that could take loan to value to 30% or less. Many borrowers also don't fully tap their credit lines.
The first security over Oracle stock by a bank in the filings dates back to 2013. Days before the $81 billion Warner deal closed, the filings show that Ellison expanded his borrowing with Citigroup and JPMorgan, for the first time pledging shares in SpaceX and in Paramount Skydance -- the company that bought Warner Bros. to form Skydance.
The Paramount Skydance shares would have converted to Skydance stock on the day of the deal's close, Oct. 6.
What the filings in California show, bank by bank:
JPMorgan on Oct. 1 expanded a May 2025 loan agreement secured on shares in Oracle and Tesla by restating the collateral and adding shares in SpaceX and Paramount Skydance. The bank didn't specify the number of shares it has a claim on.
Citigroup a week earlier, on Sept. 25, also added shares in SpaceX and Paramount Skydance to its securities collateral, and upped existing Oracle collateral to 45 million shares from 30 million in May 2025. It took security over 1.5 million Tesla shares, less than the three million secured by the bank previously. (Ellison was on Tesla's board between 2018 and 2022 and he has described Elon Musk as a close friend.)
UBS in its most recent filing in May said it had security over 30 million Oracle shares.
BNP Paribas in October 2025 filed a lien on 12 million Oracle shares and one million Tesla shares.
HSBC first lent in January 2013 against Oracle stock and still has security over some according to its filings, but it didn't specify the number of shares.
Oracle has said its board governance committee reviews Ellison's pledging arrangements quarterly, and that it has determined he can repay his personal loans without having to sell pledged shares.