Most expensive luxury asset acquisitions of all time revealed

NEW YORK, NY – As the year-end festive season approaches, Wealth-X looks back at the all-time most expensive billionaire luxury asset acquisitions.

NEW YORK, NY – As the year-end festive season approaches, Wealth-X looks back at the all-time most expensive billionaire luxury asset acquisitions.

As money for them is no object, billionaires from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov have spared no expense in indulging their appetite for luxury assets such as private islands or top-of-the-line superyachts.

Luxury yachts are the most popular luxury asset acquisition. Eight of the 10 billionaires in the list own these luxury vessels.

At number one on the list is UAE President Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan (also known as Sheikh Khalifa) who purchased the world’s largest megayacht Azzam in 2013 for a reported sum of US$627 million. Wealth-X calculates that the value of the yacht is merely 3.5 percent of Sheikh Khalifa’s net worth of US$17.9 billion.

Measuring a whopping 590-feet, Sheikh Khalifa’s Azzam is the biggest yacht in the world, overtaking Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich’s 533-feet yacht Eclipse, which was the world’s biggest for the past three years.

Below are the top five all-time luxury acquisitions:

Rank
Name
Luxury Asset
Asset Price

(in US$ million)
Estimated Net
Worth

(in US$ million)

1
Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Bin Zayed
Al Nahyan
Yacht, Azzam
627
17,900

2
Larry Ellison
Lanai Island, Hawaii
500
46,400

3
Roman Abramovich
Yacht, Eclipse
485
12,400

4
Yury Shefler
Yacht, Serene
330
1,600

5
Andrey Melnichenko
Yacht, A
323
13,600

Russian vodka tycoon Yury Shefler comes in fourth on the list with his luxury yacht Serene, an asset that โ€“ with a price tag of US$300 million โ€“ represents over 20 percent of his net worth of US$1.6 billion.

Ellison’s US$500 million acquisition of Lanai Island in Hawaii in 2012 ranks second on Wealth-X’s list. He was named top billionaire island owner by Wealth-X in June 2013, beating other billionaires such as Google CEO Larry Page and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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