U2 frontman Bono is set to book a loss of $140m (£92m) after Palm announced a $1.2bn deal to sell itself to personal computer giant Hewlett-Packard.
Bono’s private equity venture, Elevation Partners, owns an approximate 30pc stake in Palm, having invested $460m in the struggling handset maker in 2007 and 2008. The H-P deal values Palm’s equity at $961m – the rest of the deal price is debt – meaning Elevation’s stake will be worth roughly $320m.
Palm, which began life in 1992 as one of the companies at the forefront of the personal digital assistant (PDA), has struggled of late as a result of lagging sales and increasing marketing costs, downgrading sales estimates for the current quarter by more than half in March.