Bono's reputation as the Mother Teresa of rock is in jeopardy following a pair of business deals tying him to one of the most conservative businessmen in America and the creators of violent video-games with an anti-socialist bent. He's also been criticised for a plan to avoid U2 paying tax in Ireland.
The deals were struck by Elevation Partners, a $1.9bn (£1bn) Silicon Valley-based investment firm, of which Bono is a founding partner. On Monday, Elevation announced an investment of $250m (£130m) in Forbes Media, a publishing company managed by Steve Forbes. Forbes ran twice for the US presidency - in 1996 and 2000 - arguing for a flat income tax, prayer in schools and a ban on abortion.
Bono, a champion of Third World debt relief and AIDS treatment, thus becomes part-owner of Forbes |
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magazine and a number of other business titles serving America's financial elite. U2 has also joined many business high-fliers in moving part of its multi-million-dollar operation from Ireland to Amsterdam, to take advantage of a lighter tax regime.
Meanwhile, another of Elevation's portfolio companies, Pandemic Studios, a video-game developer, has incurred the wrath of American liberals for creating a game in which players take the role of mercenaries sent to Venezuela to depose a Hugo Chavez-like figure. Players of Mercenary 2: World in Flames are told "if you can see it, you can buy it, steal it or blow the living crap out of it". Pandemic has also done work creating computerized war simulations with the Institute for Creative Technologies, a southern Californian research centre funded by the US Army. 
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