As of May 18, many people thought that U2 frontman Bono had overtaken Paul McCartney as the richest musician in the world. It was orginally thought Bono would make $1.5 billion off the Facebook IPO, but the longtime rocker has debunked the rumors.
The private equity firm he is involved with, Elevation Partners, owns 2.3% of the shares in Facebook.
They originally bought 2.3% of the company for $90 million in 2009. When Facebook went public, many thought that Bono was going to rake in $1.5 billion, but apparently this isn’t the case. No fear, Beatles fans, McCartney is still the world’s richest rockstar with a total fortune of a whopping £665 million.
Here’s what Bono told MSNBC:
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.
Although it was originally rumored that the Facebook team would profit a grand $16 billion off the IPO, but now MSNBC is reporting that what was considered to be one of the biggest stock offerings in Wall Street history is starting to look more like a nightmare. When Bono went on record about the ordeal, he made it clear that this investment was always in the support of technology, rather than being oriented in the pursuit of money:
Just being in a band, I’ve always felt blessed. I got interested in technology because I’m an artist… Technology is huge, I wanted to learn about it. People might say that’s odd, but I think it’s odd if artists aren’t interested in the world around them. I’m always chasing that. Facebook are an amazing team, a brilliant team, it’s a technology that brings people together.
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