Elevation Partners Spends $120M More On Facebook Shares
The private equity firm that counts rock star Bono as a member of its investment team is taking a greater interest in Facebook. According to a new report, Elevation Partners has spent $120 million on five million of the company's secondary market shares.
 Sarah Lacy wrote earlier this morning that Elevation disclosed the move in "a recent letter to its limited partners." Also, "This is on top of Elevation's $90 million, 2.5 million share purchase back in November."
That's an important detail, since there's no reason to believe Elevation Partners would throw good money after bad. Indeed, it makes sense to conclude that the original investment's done better than predicted, and that whatever info Facebook's supplied its shareholders with makes the future look even brighter.
Then it's also necessary to note that Elevation's move doesn't represent any sort of hostile maneuver. Lacy explained, "Facebook controls who buys its shares on the secondary market, and Elevation has tight ties with the company. Elevation founders Roger McNamee and Bono were personal investors in Facebook, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's brother-in-law is Mark Bodnick, another Elevation partner."
We'll try to avoid cliches about a "beautiful day," but this arrangement really does look like a win for all involved.
The slight catch for some people might be that Elevation Partners doesn't have a great track record in terms of picking winners, with its investment in Palm earning the organization more than a few scornful headlines.
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Mon Jun 28, 2010 07:00 am
Online Shoppers Have Bigger Holiday Budgets Than Offline Shoppers
Compete has shared some findings from a new study on consumer holiday shopping behavior. According to the firm, active online buyers (consumers who intend to spend over 30% of their holiday budgets online) have bigger budgets than other shoppers. Furthermore, they are more likely to spend that money on Black Friday.
The study shows that "active online buyers" plan to spend twice as much ($912 on average) throughout the holiday season as other consumers. 37 percent of the online buyers also say they'll shop on Black Friday, compared with 33 percent of other consumers.
"Many retailers are bracing for lower online sales, but our research shows that not all shoppers are created equal," said Debra Miller, associate, Retail and Consumers Products at Compete. "While most consumers say they'll spend less this year, online shoppers seem to have deeper pockets and they'll be looking for deals starting on Black Friday. Smart retailers should take a much closer look at online shopping segments relevant to them to capture a larger share of wallet among online consumers."
Other findings from Compete include:
- 86 percent of shoppers have completed less than half of their total holiday shopping; 41 percent have not yet begun.
- 90 percent of consumers will spend at least some portion of their holiday budget online this year, up from 84 percent in 2008.
- 42 percent of consumers reported th/> [...]
Tue Nov 24, 2009 09:20 am
Stanford Endorses Google Books Settlement
The last few months were probably long and hard ones for members of the Google Books team; it had started to seem like the whole world objected to their proposed scanning and sharing settlement. But it turns out that Stanford is on Google's side, as a new deal was announced this afternoon.
 Stanford and Google first sealed a book-related deal in late 2004. In fact, Stanford was one of five organizations that, on December 14th of 2004, joined what was then known as an expansion of the Google Print program.
Now, a post on the Google Public Policy Blog has stated, "Stanford University . . . has expanded our original partnership to take advantage of our settlement agreement to make millions of works from its library collection accessible to readers, researchers, and book lovers across the United States."
The post continued, "That means that if the settlement agreement is approved by the court, anyone in the US will be able to find, preview and buy online access to books from Stanford's library."
So obviously, this could be a significant agreement. We'll just need to find out how the settlement agreement fares before we can be sure that the terms will stick.
Related Articles:
> Google Bows To Chinese Authors On Book Scanning
> [...]
Tue Feb 02, 2010 11:25 am
Family of Missing Growing Pains Actor Andrew Koenig Turns to Web
Andrew Koenig, an actor best known for portraying Kirk Cameron's best friend "Boner" on the 80s sitcom Growing Pains has gone missing, and his family is using the web to try and find him. The family's efforts begin at Andrew's father's website at WalterKoneigSite.com, which details Andrew's last known whereabouts and the efforts the family is taking to try and locate him.
Here is what he looked like on "Growing Pains":
Here is a more current photo provided on the site:
"Andrew has been an activist his entire life and most recently has been working on behalf of the people of Burma, and was arrested during the 2008 Rose Bowl parade for protesting American involvement in China's Olympics," it says on the site. "Andrew was suffering from depression at the time of his disappearance. The last time the Koenigs heard from Andrew by phone was on February 9. His cell phone is turned off and the last time his phone received a text was on February 16 in Vancouver."
It goes on to explain that on February 16, Walter got a letter from his son, which left him "concerned," due to its "despondent tone." The site says it's not believed that any specific incident prompted the disappearance, adding that drugs were not an issue.
Contact information for the Vancouver detective on the case is provided at the site.
Andrew appears to have [...]
Tue Feb 23, 2010 02:20 am
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