Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle Corporation (ORCL), has pledged 67 million additional Oracle shares as collateral for personal loans compared with a year ago — a stake worth roughly $9.2 billion at Friday's closing price.

A proxy filing released on Friday showed the increase represents a 19% jump in pledged shares from 2025 levels. Ellison now has approximately 36% of his total Oracle holdings tied up as loan collateral. Borrowing against shares lets insiders raise cash while keeping ownership of the stock, though it leaves a slice of personal wealth exposed to the terms of the underlying loan arrangements as share prices move.

The disclosure arrived alongside a soft session for Oracle shares, which closed at $137.10 on Friday, down 1.75% on the day.

Ellison owns approximately 1.16 billion Oracle shares. He serves as the company's executive chair and chief technology officer at the software firm he co-founded decades ago.

Why Ellison Is Borrowing Against His Stake

According to the filing, the pledges are connected to Ellison's role in helping finance his son David's company, Paramount Skydance, which is working to close a $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The Ellison family has committed $47 billion in equity funding toward the Warner deal, with roughly $24 billion of that sum coming from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. Paramount is also lining up debt financing to complete the transaction. The scale of the deal has made it one of the largest media acquisitions in recent memory.

Notably, Oracle's own corporate policy generally bars officers and directors from pledging company stock as loan collateral. Ellison is the exception written into that policy.

Warner Bros. Deal Moves Closer to Completion

The Warner Bros. acquisition inched closer to the finish line this week. Paramount reached a settlement with 12 state attorneys general who had sued to block the merger. The Writers Guild was also part of that legal challenge, and Paramount settled with the union as well, clearing another obstacle to closing the deal. With those legal challenges settled, the remaining steps to watch are Paramount's debt financing and the formal closing of the $111 billion transaction.

Earlier this month, Ellison disclosed a plan to sell up to $7.5 billion worth of Oracle stock, then canceled the planned sale shortly after announcing it. The reversal came before this week's proxy filing detailing the new collateral pledges. It is not clear from the filing what prompted Ellison to scrap the sale.

Oracle shares have moved along with broader software-sector swings this year, and Friday's 1.75% decline amounted to a modest pullback rather than a sharp drop. Warner Bros. Discovery stock ticked up slightly on Friday, gaining 0.06%, while Paramount Skydance shares fell 2.16% in the same session.

What the Filing Reveals

The proxy filing is a routine annual disclosure required of public, giving investors a window into how much company stock executives have tied up in personal financial arrangements. Ellison's total pledge now sits at a scale few corporate insiders match. Pledging disclosures draw governance scrutiny because falling collateral values can prompt lenders to demand additional security, which is why investors track how much of an executive's stake is encumbered.

The $9.2 billion figure reflects Friday's closing price and will shift as Oracle's stock moves. Next year's proxy filing will show whether the pledge level moves again from here.

Source: CoinCentral