World's richest rivals do battle on the home front By Simon Davis in Los Angeles
LARRY ELLISON, the man snapping at the heels of Microsoft founder Bill Gates to become the world's richest man, has spent £70 million on his Silicon Valley home - and the price is rising. Mr Ellison, the flamboyant 56-year-old who founded the software firm Oracle, has always duelled with Mr Gates. Having the most extravagant home is the latest bout in the conflict. Five years ago Ellison bought a 23-acre site in Woodside, a town on the fringe of Silicon Valley regarded as the most expensive real estate in America.
The plot cost £28 million and he has already spent £43 million building a Japanese imperial villa and gardens. The final cost could reach £107 million when it is finished in 2003. About 81,000 cubic yards of earth were shifted to create the property, enough to raise a football pitch 45 feet into the air.
The largest lake is 2.7 acres, fed by eight waterfalls, and holds 3.9 million gallons of water. More than 500 mature Japanese cherry trees have been imported, with 20,000 shrubs and 5,000 tons of giant boulders - one of which has been scooped out to form a whirlpool bath while another is being made into a bathroom.
The home is made up of 10 buildings linked by bridges, and the roofs are of 18in-thick Japanese grasses. The gardens feature a replica of the Shokintei teahouse at the Katsura royal compound in Kyoto, Japan, built in the 1600s. On the market, it would be the most expensive house in the country, costing more than Gates's Seattle home.
Mr Gates' compound, valued at £75 million, has parking for 28 cars and an artificial stream with salmon. The building is set over an acre and the kitchen floor tiles include real fossils and cost more than £700 each. An architect on the project said: "Ellison has incredible vision and has been fearless in trying new things."
Bruce Dodd, a San Francisco architect, said: "Successful people have a rivalry. It is interesting if it is expressed in architecture." Woodsiders are used to lavishness. The town's 5,225 residents boast a combined wealth estimated at £750 billion. An 11-acre plot with a few pine trees and a shed recently sold for £36 million.
The pair's rivalry is the talk of the computer industry. Mr Ellison supports the proposed break-up of Microsoft following the recent anti-trust trial. Mr Gates scoffs at Mr Ellison's vision of personal computers relying on the internet rather than hard drives. Mr Ellison cuts a tanned playboy dash, wears Armani suits and drives exotic sports cars.
He has been married and divorced three times. He won the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race and likes to fly decommissioned fighter aircraft. Mr Gates, by contrast, is a family man and archetypal computer geek. He has been married for six years, has two children and enjoys reading and fine art.
He had a privileged childhood, attending private school, while Mr Ellison was born to an unmarried teenager and given to relatives as a baby. When Mr Ellison planned to donate £70 million for school computers, he was reported to be livid after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave £140 million for computers in libraries on the eve of his announcement.
Mr Ellison was recently named by Forbes magazine as the second richest businessman working in the industry behind Mr Gates. While the Microsoft chief has seen his fortune plummet by £26 billion in the past year, bringing him down to £37.5 billion, Mr Ellison has seen his shoot up to £29 billion. Mr Ellison is said to be desperate to overtake his rival.
Like Mr Gates, Mr Ellison has fitted his home with the latest electronic gadgetry. But happily for Mr Ellison his home is costing far more per square foot than Mr Gates's, although it will not be as large.
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