As if Bono wasn’t already one of the more unlikeable men in modern music, now’s he’s going to be filthy, stinking rich too.
NME reports that Bono, or Paul Hewson as nobody calls him, will tomorrow become the world’s richest musician thanks to the stocks that he owns in Facebook being made public.
The social media giant are set to float on the stock exchange tomorrow which means early investors, like the U2 frontman, are expected to yield enormous returns on their investment. He might not have featured in the flick about Facebook’s inception, The Social Network, but the Irish singer was also a key early adopter of the site.
Bono, who previously made a $US90 million dollar investment in Facebook three years ago through Elevation Partners, his private equity firm, saw him owning 2.3% of the shares in the site that would become a social media monopoly.
2.3% may not sound like much, but considering the Facebook juggernaut is already valued at over $US100 billion, Bono’s shares equates to him cashing in to the tidy tune of $US1.5 billion dollars. A figure that puts him leaps ahead of Paul McCartney’s status as the world’s richest musician, the Beatle’s fortune last estimated at $US1 billion dollars.
On the plus side, Bono’s new bursting bank account means the well-publicised activist for Africa’s equality can probably personally afford to help offset some third-world debt. Good news for music fans, it might also mean he eases up on his notorious mid-concert preaching. We can only hope.
