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Digital
Facebook floats, but how much did Bono make?
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 21 May 2012
So, Facebook finally floated on Friday, with 15% of the company being sold in the form of 421 million shares at $38 a piece, valuing the company at $104 billion overall and raising in the region of $16 billion in cash.
Although the expected post-IPO boost in share price didn’t come (the shares closed on Friday just slightly above the starting price), it’s still a phenomenal valuation for the eight year old company, and affirms vast wealths for each of the firm’s founders and initial investors. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg celebrated by getting married, much to the surprise of his friends, who thought they were attending a party to mark the social networking billionaire’s other half’s recent graduation.
Another investor whose wealth was boosted by the Facebook IPO was Bono, whose investment vehicle Elevation Partners bought a small stake in the social networking firm in 2009. As Facebook arrived on the Nasdaq stock exchange many reckoned the U2 frontman would be $1.5 billion richer, making his overall fortune bigger than Paul McCartney’s. Many wondered aloud on Twitter whether Bono would use his new found monies to make poverty history, as he’s often so keen to encourage the rest of us to do with our spare cash.
Though, to be fair to Bono, no one knows if the Facebook IPO will result in an immediate cash boost for Elevation; even if it did, to get the full value of the stake the group would have to sell its share; and even then it would be Elevation which would be $1.5 billion richer. How much Bono himself would then see isn’t known.
Certainly the U2 man was keen that everyone know he was not now a billionaire or richer than Macca. He told MSNBC this weekend: “Contrary to reports, I’m not a billionaire or going to be richer than any Beatle – and not just in the sense of money, by the way, The Beatles are untouchable – those billionaire reports are a joke”.
