Elevation Partners is an American private equity firm that invests in intellectual property and media and entertainment companies. The firm has $1.9 billion of assets under management.
The firm was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in New York City and San Francisco. It has approximately 20 investment professionals and other employees.
History
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 because of its association with Bono, lead singer of the musical group U2, who joined the company shortly after it creation in 2004[1]. The firm is named after U2's song "Elevation".[2]
Investments
On March 22, 2005, as its first major venture Elevation attempted to purchase Eidos Interactive[3]. However, its bid failed and the video games giant was sold to rival SCi Entertainment.[4]
On November 3, 2005, Elevation invested $300 million to create an alliance between video game developers BioWare and Pandemic Studios, making it one of the biggest independent developers in the world. It also invested $100 million in Move.com, which operates real estate information services.citation needed
In August 2006, Elevation announced that it had made an investment in Forbes Media, the parent company of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com.citation needed
On June 4, 2007 Elevation Partners announced an investment of $325m (€242m) for a 25 percent stake in Palm, Inc..[2]
On July 11, 2007 Elevation Partners acquired SDI Media Group, the world's largest provider of subtitling and language dubbing service to the entertainment industry. Elevation purchased the company from Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm that acquired SDI Media in 2004.citation needed
On October 11, 2007, it was announced that EA had negotiated a deal with Elevation to pay $860 million (USD) in order to acquire both Bioware and Pandemic Studios.[5][6]
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 may be examining a deeper relationship.[7]
Portfolio companies
References
External links
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