Turns out the story we floated last week — that Larry Ellison had sold a share in his elephantine yacht to a fellow mogul, David Geffen — was true. The Wall Street Journal reports that Geffen — who made his fortune putting out records for artists as varied as John Lennon, Aerosmith and Cher — bought a half share in the Rising Sun for more than $125m. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, the database company, and California's richest man, is the most impulsive spender of all the tech moguls. He moves on to a new Japanese-style villa, or yacht, even before he's sold the last; and poured $30m into one of last year's Hollywood duds, in which his son happened to be a stunt pilot. But the Rising Sun was his Xanadu: a vast floating palace, the world's second largest yacht, built at a cost of $250m, which, as Ellison discovered after a few days of sailing, was too large to dock where he wanted.

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