After the disaster of Spiderman - finally Bono has some good non-U2 news. His company are set to net $540M from their Facebook investment :o

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ireland...vation-partners

:o

 

 

He must be richer than the whole Irish Govt by now. :blink:

Bono's US firm to reap €18.8m profit

 

Sunday January 09 2011

 

ELEVATION Partners -- the €1.46bn US private equity firm co-founded by Bono -- looks set to reap a €18.85m profit from a US property website business. Other shareholders in the property website business, however, have seen the value of their shares plummet by up to 64 per cent since 2005.

 

In November of 2005, Elevation Partners invested $100m (€77m) in Homestore Inc, a business that owns a number of leading US property websites, including Move.com, Moving.com, Realtor.com and SeniorHousingNet.com.

 

Bono and his partners -- who include former Apple executive vice-president and finance chief Fred Anderson -- made the investment in a type of share called convertible preferred stock.

 

These shares are more lucrative for their owners than ordinary shares (or common stock as they're known in the US) which are listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

 

At the time of the investment, Elevation also agreed a mandatory redemption with the website business, meaning that effectively it has earned a 3.5 per cent dividend on its stake every year -- worth €2.69m -- and will continue to do so until November 2012.

 

The share price is currently at $2.70 (it plummeted as low as $1.52 during the past year) which would have wiped out 64 per cent of the value of ordinary shareholders' investments.

 

But Bono and his colleagues have been shielded from this financial pain, which has been wreaked on the share price due to the crash in property prices since the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008.

 

In 2012, they will be able to sell their shares back to Homestore for $4.20 -- the same as the purchase price -- having netted a healthy $24.5m (€18.85m) over the seven years.

 

"This is smart investing to minimise risk. Elevation Partners have structured this investment in such a way as to give great upside, with downside protection," a spokesman for the company said.

 

U2's the Edge -- although widely reported to have been a co-founder of the firm along with Bono -- had no involvement with the company, the spokesman added.

 

Elevation Partners saw the value of their 1.5 per cent stake in Facebook soar by €400m last week.

 

*******

 

Source...Irishindependent.ie

The Sun's slant on things. Wish I'd invested in Facebook :(

 

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showb...res-rocket.html

 

 

Lucky bugger <_<

Bono earns more than $500 million with Facebook

 

 

The U2 frontman’s investment in the network has quadrupled since buying the company’s shares last year.

 

Being owner of 1.5% of the shares in a company may not sound very impressive, but that is not the case when it comes to Facebook.

 

Bono is well aware. As managing director of Elevation Partners, the investment firm he co-founded in 2001, the lead singer of U2 had the bright idea to buy shares of the successful network in 2010 and today his investment has quadrupled.

 

It happened because earlier this month the value of Facebook came to the very impressive $50 billion. Therefore, according to the site WENN , the $195 million spent initially by the Irish musician in the company’s shares of Mark Zuckerberg, are now worth $728 million.

 

However, to be able to use this money, the musician will have to wait until the company goes private, and can be traded in the stock market.

 

 

Source...puntodigital.com