Bono’s out of tune with world of investment
This week, I have found a sort of consequence on my last blog. Someone who maybe was jealous at the most famous and best investor: Warren Buffet.
Bono, the singer of one of the most famous groups in the world(U2), tries to help a lot of people, by supporting some initiatives as Live Aid, RED,…. On the other hand he tried to be the founder of an investment company. Bono was a founding investor in the company Elevation Partners.
In this article, they wrote that according financial blog 247wallst.com, Elevation Partners is the worst-run institutional fund in the United States. They invest in a lot of bad companies who lose fights with their competitors.
The first company in which they took a 25% stake was Palm. Palm was the company which was the subject of my previous blog, because they didn’t have made their expectations with their investments in the smartphone. This company was at a level of $17 when Elevation Partners bought it. By now it is on a level of $ 4, so the investment can’t be called a hotshot.
In addition Elevation Partners make more bad and stupid bets. They invest in companies as Yelp, move.com,…. Despite the most of the bets of Elevation Partners go wrong.
My vision on this article is that Bono better stops investing himself and ask professional investors and go singing again.. Now he loses a lot of money because he doesn’t know what he is doing. A perfect example is his investment in the company Palm. He could have known that it was a bad investment, if he had just asked some other people. I didn’t say that Palm is a bad company but they have a lot of good concurrence who has better and more recognizable products. When you want to play with your money and you don’t know this branch, you’d better ask some advice. Maybe it’s a good idea to make a new cd…
Resource: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article7079038.ece
Gert,
BeantwoordenVerwijderenI don't fully agree with you. We all know that investing in a company a risky business is, there is always a risk that you invested in the wrong company. I agree with your point of view that bono should better ask professionals to invest his money in good investments instead of founding a new investing company.
But on the other hand professionals could also make some errors like we have seen with the financial crisis. Many investing companies have lost a lot of money due to the recently crisis. Although I think that they will regain these losses in a short time. They have the knowledge to see opportunities to invest in.