Amsterdan

Bono investment group buys into Forbes

New YorkReuters picked up the story early: “Family-held publisher Forbes on Monday said it sold a minority stake in its collection of business media properties to a private equity firm that includes rock star Bono as a partner. Forbes created a new company, Forbes Media LLC, to encompass Forbes magazine, founded in 1917, its Internet and other properties.

“Elevation Partners, a $1.9 billion media and entertainment buyout firm, bought a stake in the new company, making it the first outside investor in Forbes media assets. Bono, lead singer of rock group U2, is one of its six partners.”

Elevation Partners was formed in June 2004 by Bono (aka Paul Hewson) and what the Forbes/Wolfe Blog then reported as “an all-star team [including] Roger McNamee of Silver Lake Partners, John Riccitiello (ex-president of Electronic Arts) and Fred Anderson (who just retired as Apple’s CFO).”

According to the Mercury News, “the Forbes deal is Elevation's third investment. It invested $100 million in Move.com, formerly Homestore, a home and real estate site, and $300 million in Pandemic Studios and BioWare, two independent video game developers. For Bono and McNamee, a musician himself whose telephone music for callers on hold featured the Doors on Monday, the Forbes deal is more than an investment.”
``I think the Web is becoming more important in people's lives,'' said Roger McNamee, managing director and co-founder of Elevation Partners. ``The next transformation is that people will want content when they want it, how they want it, where they want it. They have a tremendous need for insight because they don't have enough time.''

Mercury News quoted Steve Forbes, chairman and publisher of Forbes, as saying that despite what naysayers may think about the Internet killing off traditional media, ``the media universe is expanding. We see opportunities and we want to seize them before others seize them.''

This investment positions Bono and Company squarely in the business media content world, just as U2’s media campaign for the Apple iPod featured U2’s “Vertigo” as the soundtrack. U2’s Vertigo tour started here in San Diego on March 28, 2005 with the last performance set in Honolulu December 9, 2006.

The Forbes acquisition comes on the heels of Bono’s being named one of three of Time Magazine’s 2005 “Persons of the Year” along with Bill and Melinda Gates. Time described the trio as "Good Samaritans" who made a difference in different ways.

"For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are Time's Persons of the Year," the magazine said in its December 19, 2005 issue. The Irish rocker was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and 2005 for his work in combating poverty in Africa and the U2 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.

``When Bono talks about getting rid of poverty, a big part of what he does is give people the tools to improve their lives economically,'' McNamee was quoted by Mercury News, who said he expects to see a Forbes magazine wherever there's a growing economy. ``That's about entrepreneurship and capital. And it's at the individual level. You have to do it from the bottom up. Forbes isn't the whole answer, but they are part of the answer.''

As RTE Business described it today: “It brings together Bono, one of the world's most prominent celebrity activists fighting poverty, with the 'entrepreneurial capitalism' advocated by the Forbes family.”

And in the words of Anthony Clark in Britain’s The Guardian, “Bono has cemented his reputation as the establishment's favourite rock star.”

posted by DanZ @ 10:18 AM