From U2 to Facebook, Bono Net Worth Is Now $700 Million

The Irish musician Bono was born in Dublin, Ireland, and his real name is Paul David Hewson.

Bono is not only a well-known musician, but also a political activist. An ad in Paul school’s bulletin board was the starting point of his successful musical career. At the age of 16, Paul formed his band under the initial name Feedback, changing it later into U2, in 1977.

In 1980, the band signed a contract with Island Records and set out to become one of the most appreciated groups in the world. Throughout their career, U2 have released 12 albums and have been awarded no less than 22 Grammies. This impressive success has been accompanied by huge revenues, and this is how Bono net worth has reached $700 million.

What is probably less spectacular, but not less important, is Bono’s social activity. He used to perform in the Band Aid, Live Aid, and Live 8 concerts and campaigned for the debt relief of the third world countries and a greater involvement of the international community in the AIDS crisis on the Black Continent. He even co-founded an organization in 2002, called DATA, the initials coming from “debt”, “AIDS”, “trade”, and ”Africa”. He followed up with the well-known initiative Project Red, meant to fight disease in Africa.

Apart from being a musician and social activist, Bono is an accomplished businessman as well. He owns a big real estate portfolio and is also part of a private equity firm’s board – Elevation Partners. In his private life, he married Alison in 1976 and gave life to four children, out of which two daughters.

Rumors have it that Bono become a billionaire following an investment in Facebook, through the equity firm Elevation Partners. There is something real in these rumors, as Elevation Partners made a pre-IPO investment of around $210 million. This investment is worth today $1.5 billion.

What many supporters of this story fail to consider is that Bono is only one of a total of six founding partners of the equity firm and that Elevation would only be entitled to 20% of the profit that its investments produce. As a consequence, even if the rumors company made the investment and it turned out quite profitable, the part that Bono would personally be entitled to would not exceed an amount between $40 and $50 million, quite insignificant for his nowadays net worth.