Bono elevated to $1bn fund’s top team

U2 front man Bono is to become one of six managing directors of a $1 billion media and entertainment fund in the US.

Bono, aka Paul Hewson, 44, has gained access to world leaders such as US President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as he vigorously prosecutes an anti-poverty agenda to reduce the debts of Third World companies.

Bono is joining some older heavy hitters at Elevation Partners, a new Silicon Valley fund set up earlier this year. Fred Anderson, 60, who retired earlier this month as Apple Computer Inc's finance chief is also to become a managing director at Elevation.

Mr Anderson is credited with helping steer Apple back from near death in the late 1990s.

Elevation was founded by veteran technology investor Roger McNamee and John Riccitiello, who in April left his post as president of videogame maker Electronic Arts Inc. for Elevation.

Bono's participation will boost the profile of Elevation, which people familiar with the operation say will initially raise $1 billion for buyouts and investments in media and entertainment companies, seeking to profit from turmoil in those sectors.

Bono has been long regarded as a canny business man, steering U2 to becoming the most popular band in the world. U2 have a €634m fortune, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

In the 1980s, the band, with manager Paul McGuiness, brokered a deal that gives U2 ownership of its albums' master tapes.

The band's hits include the 2001 Grammy Award winner Elevation, though a spokesman for the fund says the firm's name is coincidental.

U2 are working on a new album due for release for the Christmas market and in time to pre-promote a 2005 World Tour.

Elevation's partners refused to comment on details of its plans or Bono's responsibilities, citing a quiet period mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for private-equity firms involved in fund raising. Bono and U2 publicist Regine Moylett confirmed the singer's plans to join the fund but would not comment further.

Bono brings to the fund a network of connections that span entertainment and politics and an ability to open doors at the very highest level. He has good connections in the Bush administration and in 2002 accompanied the then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on a tour of Africa to study the impact of foreign aid.

Much of his debt-relief and AIDS work is handled by DATA or "debt, AIDS, trade, Africa" a not-for-profit organisation he co-founded with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute and the Centre for Global Development.