Sunday, March 28, 2010

the worst investor in America

U2 singer Bono's investments into Elevation Partners, which has offices in New York and Menlo Park, have helped make him the "worst investor in America," according to the online publication 24/7 Wall Street.

With large investments in Palm, Forbes, and Move.com -- "an unprecedented string of disastrous investments which even bad luck could not explain" -- Elevation Partners has earned the distinction of being "arguably the worst run institutional fund of any size in the United States," 24/7 Wall Street asserts.

Elevation bought 25 percent of Palm in 2007, and the company's stock has since tanked - down to $3.65 from $18 last September - after the company's efforts to regain mobile phone market share from Apple, RIM and other smartphone makers failed.

Elevation put $100 million into Move.com, which owns home and real estate websites, and company shares subsequently lost 50 percent of their value, 24/7 noted.

And recently, Elevation committed to investing $100 million in Yelp, the San Francisco online user generated business review site, with $25 million to the company and the rest to stockholders. Shortly thereafter, Yelp was hit with multiple lawsuits claiming that it sought to extort money from local businesses in exchange for manipulating reviews, a charge the company says is false.

[via chucks_angels]

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