Founding Elevation Partners was founded by former
Silver Lake Partners professionals
Roger McNamee and
Marc Bodnick, as well as
Fred Anderson (
Apple Inc.) and
John Riccitiello (
Electronic Arts). Elevation is perhaps best known for its association with
Bono, lead singer of the musical group
U2, who joined the company shortly after its creation in 2004. The firm is named after U2's song "
Elevation". As of January 2011 Marc Bodnick departed to concentrate on the development of
Quora. Elevation Partners is not affiliated in any way with The Elevation Group.
Investments On March 22, 2005, as its first major venture Elevation attempted to purchase
Eidos Interactive. However, its bid failed and the video games giant was sold to rival
SCi Entertainment. On November 3, 2005, Elevation invested $300 million to create an alliance between video game developers
BioWare and
Pandemic Studios, placing them under VG Holding Corp. and making it one of the biggest independent developers in the world. It also invested $100 million in
Move, Inc., which operates real estate information services. In August 2006, Elevation announced that it had made an investment in
Forbes Media, the parent company of
Forbes magazine and Forbes.com. Sources stated that the deal gave Elevation a stake of more than 40 percent at a cost of $250 million to $300 million. After Elevation invested in Forbes, the employee pension plan was frozen. In the years that followed, there were numerous rounds of layoffs worldwide. The Forbes family also sold its iconic building on Manhattan's
5th Avenue to
New York University. On June 4, 2007 Elevation Partners announced an investment of $325 million (€242 million) for a 25 percent stake in
Palm, Inc. On October 11, 2007, it was announced that EA, now with Elevation founding partner John Riccitiello as CEO, had negotiated a deal with Elevation to pay US$860 million in order to acquire both Bioware and Pandemic Studios. On April 16, 2010, Elevation Partners acquired 1% of the company
Facebook for $90 million. Through September 2014 the fund had generated an 11.4% annual return.
Relationship with Wikimedia On March 20, 2008, the
Associated Press published a story saying members of Elevation Partners had donated and raised more than a million dollars for the
Wikimedia Foundation, and were possibly examining a deeper relationship. ==Portfolio companies==