Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison bought a Hawaiian island for $300 million in 2012. He's paying full wages and benefits for the island's workers during the pandemic shutdown.
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Katie Warren
Apr 29, 2020, 20:17 IST
An undated drone photo shows Hulopoe Bay on the island of Lanai, Hawaii.Shutterstock/Joe West
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison has been paying full wages and benefits for workers on the Hawaiian island he owns as businesses remain closed during the coronavirus pandemic, Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
The tech mogul is the ninth-richest person in the world, worth an estimated $58.6 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index.
Ellison promised to pay workers through May 1, and a spokesperson for Ellison's operating arm on the island told Business Insider that "no decisions have been made at this time" about whether he will continue past that date.
Larry Ellison, the billionaire cofounder of Oracle, has been paying full wages and benefits for workers on his Hawaiian island while many of its businesses have been shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic, Robin Kaye reported for the Honolulu Civil Beat.
Ellison owns the island's hotels, the water company, the cemetery, the main supermarket, and nearly a third of all the island's housing. He's even in talks to buy the island's electric grid.
"Right now all of them are collecting their full pay and benefits until May 1, 2020," Victorino said. "He has also reduced or eliminated rent for all the business quad – the park area, Dole Park, that whole quadrant that goes right around it, that block – he is not collecting any rent this month, and is looking maybe next month to help again."
Ellison is only paying his own employees' wages on the island. A spokesperson for Pulama Lanai, the management company that oversees his ownership stake in the island, declined to say how many of the island's 3,200 residents work for Ellison. The spokesperson also told Business Insider that "no decisions have been made at this time" about whether the wages and benefits payments will continue past May 1.
How the island of Lanai is weathering the coronavirus
The two hotels on the island, Four Seasons Resort Lanai and Hotel Lanai, both of which Ellison owns, are temporarily closed, but a skeleton and security crew is exempt from the island's stay-at-home order to keep the hotels operational, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat. The island's beaches were closed on April 17. Restaurants and coffee shops are open for takeout and delivery only. At the time of publication, Lanai had just confirmed its first case of coronavirus.
Since buying Lanai, the smallest inhabited island in Hawaii, Ellison has spent a little more than $41 million on additional homes on the island. He has also bought two airlines that connect Lanai to the other islands (he later sold one), refurbished the island's hotels, and invested in sustainable energy sources. The tech mogul plans to use the island as an experimental model for environmentally friendly practices.
Ellison told Forbes he has built two 20,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouses on the island, called Sensei Farms, with sensors and cameras that track data like water usage and airflow. He noted that they are powered by Tesla solar panels. Sensei also has a $3,000-a-night spa called Sensei Retreat.
The spokesperson for Pulama Lanai declined to comment on whether or not Ellison was self-isolating on Lanai. He spoke to Forbes on March 12 from his 250-acre estate in Rancho Mirage, California, but the billionaire tech mogul could be at any number of the dozens of homes that he owns internationally.
Ellison has dropped hundreds of millions of dollars on other properties across the globe, including multiple homes in Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe, and at least 10 homes on a stretch of beach in Malibu known as "Billionaire's Beach." Then there's his private golf club estate in Rancho Mirage, California; his mansions in Newport, Rhode Island; and garden villa in Kyoto, Japan.
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Do you live on Lanai and have a story to share? Email the reporter at kwarren@businessinsider.com.
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