Bono elevated to capital heights but claims he's not money-driven
He sued a former employee after she tried to sell a pair of his trousers and moved his business offshore to avoid Irish taxes, but Bono has claimed he's "famously" not motivated by profit.
The claim was made in a recent interview with US-based business magazine, Condé Nast Portfolio, in an article about his investment firm, Elevation Partners.
Bono is one of five partners in the private investment firm, which is named after U2's hit song, Elevation. The group raised €1.3bn in capital to invest in media and music industry shares.
In a series of interviews with Bono and the manager of the firm, Roger McNamee, a silicon valley investment veteran, Bono made the claim, in his usual verbose style, that his newest capitalist reincarnation is all about the greater good. "I'm a top line-melody guy," he told the magazine. "That's what I do. I understand harmony, I understand rhythm. But I sell ideas -- musical, political, and, in this case, commercial ideas.
"So many great painters, great musicians, great geniuses, ended up with nothing. With broken hearts in rooms with broken windows, I want to see artists sitting at the table that decides the outcome of their lives."
Speaking about himself and the manager of Elevation Partners, he added: "I've not been famously profit oriented. Roger's also not motivated by profit."
Joking with the interviewer that some people ask "isn't profit what this is all about", he answers that "Roger believes, like I believe, that brilliance brings a better bottom line. Always."
After becoming one of the biggest selling bands in the world in the early Nineties, U2 asserted a ruthless control over all their image and music rights, T-shirt sales, promotional deals and concert revenues.
The group set up trusts and companies which disclose little about their actual returns and were designed to minimise their tax liabilities. And last year they moved their music publishing business, which was no longer fully covered by the artists' tax exemption in Ireland, to the Netherlands in order to minimise their tax bills.
In 2005 the band made headlines by introducing a €32 charge for fans to log on to their website, and one year later made the international news for suing their former stylist, Lola Cashman, when she attempted to sell an old pair of trousers and a hat Bono had worn and other items which a court later found belonged to the band.
Last week Cashman, who was bankrupted by the costs of losing the case and a subsequent appeal last year, said: "Bono saying that he is not profit oriented is like the Pope saying he's not interested in Catholicism.
"From the very beginning it was clear that Bono had a clear business vision, and he always recognised the importance of style and mass communication in delivering the objectives of his plan. He's now the CEO of a successful global brand."
However, in a magnanimous gesture the band agreed to waive its portion of the costs associated with suing Miss Cashman.
Bono's newest business started with him seeking an experienced investment fund manager to invest in the music industry. He ended up partners with McNamee, a successful but unorthodox technology stock expert.
McNamee, 51, leads a dual life, half techno-guru and millionaire investment manager, half modern-day hippie with a rock and roll alter ego as the lead singer in a Sixties throwback band named Moonalice.
He also lists Bill Gates, Steve Jobs of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, as his close friends.
Bono says he now spends about 15 per cent of his time on the company. Because it is a private equity firm it does not have to file public company accounts, and so no-one knows how much partners are paid or what profits it is making. But in a recent filing in America in relation to a state pension fund, it was revealed that Elevation Partners was in the red, with 8.3 per cent negative returns.
- ENDA LEAHY
