Gates loses `richest man’ crown to Oracle chief

The duel between Ellison, a polished Silicon Valley celebrity, and Gates, a halting technophile who lives on a secluded island near Seattle, is one of the most acrimonious and public of any in American business. The media has zealously monitored the stock prices of the two companies in recent weeks; a flood of "poor Bill" stories have provided a backdrop to the relatively dry Justice Department proceedings. The reversal in the two men’s wealth gives new depth to Gates’ own characterization of the antitrust events this afternoon as "very disturbing."

The recent weakness in Microsoft shares is due largely to the antitrust suit hanging over the company — a case that will likely take years to shake out. The most common method for calculating the net worth of billionaires is to look at the millions of shares they hold in the public companies they founded. As a result, the calculations do not include other investments or assets these billionaires hold. Ellison, for example, has 19 million shares of Oracle spinoff Liberate Technologies, which are valued at more than $600 million. Gates also has untold riches in investments and assets that are not publicly known. In addition, Gates has made highly publicized donations of billions of dollars.

Though he hasn’t publicly boasted of his increasing wealth relative to that of his rival, Ellison has not wasted any time jumping into the anti-Microsoft fray. Early in the drawn-out antitrust proceedings, Ellison dubbed Gates the "PC pope" because of his company’s dominance over who is allowed to build PCs. Last December, Ellison told reporters at his mansion in the posh Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco that he believes Microsoft should be broken into not two, but three companies.