Size matters for Larry Ellison

Oracle Corp. may be smaller than Microsoft Corp, but Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison can at least boast that his yacht is bigger than Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's yacht.

Measuring 138 meters (452 feet, 8 inches) in length, Ellison's megayacht, Rising Sun, was launched in June last year and is the largest private yacht in the world, reportedly costing more than US$270 million to build and fit out.

Very little information has been made publicly available about Rising Sun. Most of what is available comes from scattered press reports and Web sites created by megayacht enthusiasts who track the construction and movements of the world's biggest and most opulent yachts.

What is known is that Rising Sun was built by L