Hawaii: When a Billionaire Buys Your Hometown

The Pay Check

Bloomberg

Society & Culture, Business, Investing

4.4 • 630 Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

One of the defining trends of the pandemic has been the creation of extreme wealth at the very top. This week on The Pay Check we take a look at the booming fortunes of the world’s growing billionaire class through one man: Larry Ellison. (Net worth, give or take $90 billion.) Ellison co-founded the tech company Oracle but he may be better known for how he spends his money: yachts, mansions, a tennis tournament. In 2012, he bought an entire Hawaiian island, Lanai — home to 3,000 people. For a decade its residents have anxiously watched Ellison slowly kill their small businesses and push up rents from afar. Then, during the pandemic, Ellison moved there. Bloomberg Wealth reporter Sophie Alexander traveled down to the island to see how the billionaire’s presence has accelerated his plans, and how locals whose families have lived there for generations are managing.

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0:59.7	That's Bloomberg.com slash SBS-S-Singapore. Peter Franklin had been running a successful woodworking business on Lanai, Hawaii, when Larry Ellison, one of the richest people on the planet, bought nearly the entire island for about $300 million.
1:28.3	This was back in 2012.
1:30.3	There are feelings of both angst and excitement as Lanai residents prepare to welcome
1:34.9	new billionaire owner, Larry Ellison.
1:37.8	Larry Ellison loves to go shopping for big things.
1:41.1	He bought a Hawaiian island recently.
1:43.5	In his first interview since buying Lanai three months ago, Larry Ellison shows he's as
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