Larry Ellison's Multi-Billion Dollar Borrowing Spree to Back Son's Warner Bros. Takeover

Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder worth roughly $169 billion, dramatically expanded his personal borrowing this year rather than sell stock to help finance his son David's $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — a deal that closed October 6, 2026, forming Skydance. Instead of going through with a planned $7.5 billion Oracle stock sale, Ellison leveraged shares across four companies — Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX, and Paramount Skydance — as collateral across five major banks: Citigroup, HSBC, JPMorgan, UBS, and BNP Paribas.

The scale of Ellison's pledging is staggering. Oracle disclosed in September that he now has 413 million shares — worth around $58 billion — pledged to back personal debt, up from 346 million shares a year earlier. California regulatory filings, which track liens banks place on stock collateral, show that the banks disclosing specific Oracle share counts held security over 87 million shares, up sharply from roughly 30 million a year ago. At typical loan-to-value ratios of around 50% for highly liquid stocks like Oracle, that tranche alone could represent up to $5.7 billion in borrowing capacity — though real-world discounts for concentration and size could push the effective ratio to 30% or lower.

The timing of the borrowing expansions tracks closely with the deal's final stretch. Just days before the Warner merger closed, JPMorgan — which had an existing loan agreement from May 2025 secured on Oracle and Tesla shares — restated its collateral to add SpaceX and Paramount Skydance shares. Citigroup moved similarly on September 25, bumping its Oracle collateral to 45 million shares (up from 30 million) and adding SpaceX and Paramount Skydance exposure as well. UBS holds a lien on 30 million Oracle shares, BNP Paribas on 12 million Oracle shares and one million Tesla shares, and HSBC — which first lent against Oracle stock back in January 2013 — maintains an undisclosed position.

The strategy Ellison is employing is a textbook example of what's known among wealth managers as 'buy, borrow, and die' — a mechanism that lets ultra-wealthy individuals access liquidity without triggering taxable capital gains events. By borrowing against appreciated assets rather than selling them, Ellison sidesteps a massive tax bill while keeping his Oracle stake intact. Oracle's board governance committee reviews his pledging arrangements quarterly and has concluded he can service his personal loans without being forced to liquidate pledged shares — a key concern for any company whose founder has tens of billions in stock on the line.