Billionaire Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison plans to demolish the North Palm Beach mansion he acquired last week for $80 million.
In a letter to Oracle employees, Ellison said he will not be moving to Florida and plans to stay in Hawaii, according to Recode.
Ellison acquired the oceanfront home at 12525 Seminole Beach Road from hedge fund manager Gabriel Hoffman, who heads Accipiter Capital Management. But he’s been based in Hawaii’s Lanai, an island he purchased almost entirely in 2012. Ellison is worth nearly $100 billion, according to Forbes.
“Last year I moved from California to the island of Lana’i and became a resident of the State of Hawaii. I love it here and have no plans to move back to Florida, Texas, back to California … or anywhere else,” Ellison reportedly wrote to employees, according to Recode.
The 7.4-acre North Palm Beach estate includes a Tuscan-style, 15,514-square-foot mansion, built in 1991. It has seven bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, three half-baths and more than 520 feet of ocean frontage. It also features a large private pool, theater, wine room, chef’s kitchen, tennis court, and guest suite, and is accessible via helicopter.
It’s not unusual for the ultra wealthy to spend tens of millions of dollars on a property to just knock it down.
This year, Scott Shleifer, a partner and co-founder of the investment firm Tiger Global Management, paid more than $120 million for the oceanfront mansion at 535 North County Road. That lot was previously part of a larger property that former President Trump sold to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million in 2008. Rybolovlev subsequently razed that house, subdivided the property into three lots, and sold them off for nearly $109 million.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin has spent more than $350 million assembling homes in Palm Beach that he knocked down.
[Recode] – Katherine Kallergis