Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite will bring in some cash for Larry Ellison, Oracle's co-founder and the early financier of Netsuite — but to truly get richer, he must prove to Oracle investors the deal will work.
Despite some tough dealings with holdout shareholders, Oracle completed its purchase of Netsuite on Monday for $109 per share, above its $91.57 close on July 27, before the deal was announced.
Ellison owns nearly 32 million shares of Netsuite, according to Factset, meaning he will walk away from the cash deal with about $3.48 billion. Ellison owned about 39 percent of NetSuite's stock as of Sept. 30 — and together with his family owned 44.8 percent, according to SEC filings.
But he also owns almost 1.2 billion shares of Oracle — whose shares have fallen to $39.09, down from $40.93 before the deal was announced. All in all, Ellison's net worth is down about $1.59 billion so far.
Whether he wins or loses depends on whether companies perform well enough together to boost Oracle's shares. The deal will leverage Oracle's scale in cloud computing to increase the availability of NetSuite's software, and is expected to immediately make money for Oracle, executives said when the deal was announced in July.
The deal was hard-fought by Ellison himself, according to The New York Times, who reports that Ellison, "famously competitive," used "hardball tactics" with NetSuite shareholders. T. Rowe Price Group had previously warned it would not tender its NetSuite shares at $109, in part because "the inherent conflicts of interest between NetSuite, the Ellison entities and Oracle are daunting and may be impossible to manage."
A majority of NetSuite shareholders not affiliated with Ellison had to tender their shares for the deal to happen. CNBC has reached out to Oracle for comment.
"This was a harrowing tender process given shareholder dissention but we believe the outcome is in the best interest of all parties," Macquarie Capital analyst Sarah Hindlian wrote of the deal.
— CNBC's Ari Levy and Reuters contributed to this report.