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Google tycoon splashes out on another island

by on02 February 2024


How many do you actually need?

Google's Larry Page has bought another island to add to his collection of private hideaways.

The web mogul, who is worth a whopping $127 billion, forked out $32 million for Cayo Norte.

Cayo Norte is a tropical paradise between Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.

Page bought the island in two deals using a shell company called US Virgin Island Properties, which Business Insider traced back to him and his missus, Lucinda Southworth. The first deal was for a massive chunk of land on the island, costing $28.7 million, followed by another smaller one worth $3.4 million. Page has used the same dodgy company to buy other islands he owns.

Page's stash of private islands spans across the Caribbean and South Pacific. In 2014, he splurged $23 million on the Lollik Islands, a pair of islands in the British Virgin Islands archipelago, just 12 miles east of Cayo Norte.

He also owns Eustatia Island, on the eastern end of the British Virgin Islands. In 2020, he moved to the South Pacific, buying a majority share in the deed for the island of Tavarua in Fiji. 

Page reportedly spent several months on Tavarua during the pandemic. At the time Fiji was shut to travellers except for those arriving by private jet or superyacht, which let Page enter the country.

Since quitting his top job at Google’s parent company Alphabet in 2019, Page has gone off the radar. But he still has a board seat and effectively runs the company, alongside cofounder Sergey Brin, through a majority ownership of a special class of voting stock.

No one knows why Page bought Cayo Norte or any other private islands in his portfolio. Some reckon they are his secret hideouts from the public eye. Another theory is that Page wants to use the islands as “safe spaces” for mad experiments.

His private Eustatia Island was reportedly used for tests of his flying car company Kitty Hawk, which went bust in 2022. 

Page is not the only billionaire to buy a private island. Near his islands in the British Virgin Islands lies Sir Richard Branson’s private Necker Island. Oracle founder David Ellison bought an island in Hawaii in 2012, in a deal that has upset locals worried about Ellison’s wooing of the super-rich and his development projects for the island.

 

Last modified on 04 February 2024
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