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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bipin Prasad who wrote (13784)	4/26/2000 11:17:00 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19080

Oracle Boss Is Close To Dethroning $$ King Gates New York Post - 4/26/00 4:54:42 PM/-- (http://www.stockhouse.com/news/viewstory.asp?id=286312) In a six-second cliff-hanger on Wall Street yesterday, Bill Gates came within 44 cents of losing his title as the world's richest man. The supernerd head of Microsoft [MSFT] was worth $52.9 billion when the opening bell rang on the New York Stock Exchange, but just moments later his Microsoft shares began skidding, wiping out tens of millions by the second. At the same time, his arch rival Larry Ellison saw his Oracle [ORCL] shares surge to send Ellison's personal stock fortune within a hair's breadth of surpassing Gates' huge paper fortune. Traders watched in awe as Oracle ticked upward, and for a breathless six seconds, it appeared that Oracle might ruin Gates' day. Ellison was 44 cents per share from closing in on victory when Oracle's price turned down - and Microsoft began ticking upward again. At the showdown, Ellison, the playboy of Silicon Valley, was worth $52.7 billion - just $200,000 shy of Gates' huge fortune - with Oracle trading at $76.37. Ellison's shares needed to rise just another 44 cents to $76.81 to make Ellison's paper fortune jump to $53.02 billion and pass Gates. Gates ended the day ahead, with his title intact and his personal fortune at $54.5 billion, while Ellison trailed as the world's second-richest man at $52.1 billion. Ellison and Gate's companies went public on the same day in 1986 and the two men have been fierce competitors ever since. Their fortunes have diverged several times over the years. Until now, Gates, 44, seemed to have been winning on the software front, his Windows being installed on over 80 percent of the world's PCs. Ellison, 55, who in the early 1990s broke his neck surfing and took Oracle to the brink of bankruptcy, at least has more fun with his money. Ellison owns a Gulfstream V and an Italian fighter jet, both of which he pilots himself, and he hang glides. The house he is building in tony Woodside, Calif., is built on Zen Buddhist principles, without using any nails, and has grounds with sensors that alert his heating, lighting and music systems when the master of the house is approaching. He also owns a Bentley, a McLaren, a Porsche and two Mercedes. Known for employing pretty women in the early days at Oracle, Ellison has been divorced three times. Recently, however, Oracle's database software, which sells for millions of dollars and helps run airline reservation systems has come on strong. Only last year Ellison was No. 22 on the Forbes rich list, worth a mere $9.5 billion. Yet the rise of the Internet has seen his pet project - the distributed network - become the model for how the world's computers work. Industry watchers say there's nothing that would give the bearded Ellison more pleasure than to surpass Gates in the thing he is most famous for - being rich. "He might pretend he doesn't care, but he does," said David A. Kaplan, who covered both men in detail for his book "The Silicon Boys". "Some kid entrepreneur asked him how to be successful once and he said 'I have just two words for you: Acura NSX. Larry said he never said it but he wished he had." Ellison is more than just a smooth talker, however. "He works hard and he plays hard," said Kaplan. "He'll make a great world's richest man."