Albany native has high hopes for Forbes deal

Albany native Roger McNamee says his private equity firm has taken an ownership stake in Forbes for the long haul.

Forbes on Monday announced that Elevation Partners L.P. of Menlo Park, Calif., had acquired a 40 percent stake in the newly formed Forbes Media LLC, publisher of Forbes magazine and Forbes.com.

While details weren't released, The New York Times said Elevation paid $250 million.

"We love what they're doing," McNamee said Tuesday of Forbes. "Their perception and ours is that technology has basically turned the media business on its head."

McNamee, who was born in Albany 50 years ago, co-founded Elevation with Apple Computer Inc.'s former chief financial officer, Fred Anderson. Its principals include U2 lead singer Bono and Electronic Arts President John Riccitiello.

McNamee said Elevation sees "huge opportunities" for Forbes.

"The audience is now in charge," he said in a phone interview. "The audience is looking for more personalized, authoritative content" and that is something Forbes can provide.

Elevation's investment in Forbes "will last five years, seven years or longer," McNamee said.

McNamee's brother, George, is chairman of First Albany Cos. Inc., a boutique investment bank in downtown Albany founded by their father. Roger McNamee said he still has relatives in both Rensselaerville and Albany, and visits here regularly.

McNamee became a technology-sector analyst for T. Rowe Price in 1982 after getting degrees from Yale and Dartmouth. He later founded Integral Capital Partners, a venture firm that has worked with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm. He also co-founded Silver Lake Partners, another equity investment firm in the Silicon Valley.

McNamee is the author of "The New Normal: Great Opportunities in a Time of Great Risk" and is a rock musician, whose band, The Flying Other Brothers, performs mainly on the West Coast.

Forbes Inc., founded in 1917 by Scottish immigrant B.C. Forbes, has been selling some family assets, including a collection of Faberge Eggs in recent years, according to Bloomberg News.

Advertising pages at its flagship business magazine have slumped by almost half since 2000. Steve Forbes, 59, who spent more than $70 million on two unsuccessful runs for U.S. president, took over as chief executive officer after his father, Malcolm, died in 1990.

The magazine, which has a circulation of 900,000, had been investing in its Forbes.com Web site to help lure online advertisers and eventually sell shares in an initial public offering of the unit. The IPO never happened as Internet stocks tanked in 2000 and 2001.

"We have been pursing a partnering strategy for some years and Elevation is the right partner at the right time to accelerate our growth," Forbes Inc. told its employees in a memo Monday, according to Bloomberg News.