Pride (In The Name Of Love)

How Bono’s investment partner got busted in the college admissions scandal

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Last January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bono sat on a frigid outdoor television set for a friendly chat with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times columnist and co-creator of the hit show Billions. As it happens, the show—a fictionalized account of a hedge-fund billionaire and the federal prosecutor who sets out to bring him down—provided a bit of ironic foreshadowing at the annual gathering of the world’s wealthiest do-gooders. Joining Bono onstage that morning was William McGlashan Jr., a managing partner at TPG Growth, who had helped the U2 front man launch the Rise Fund, a $2 billion portfolio of investments committed to creating “social and environmental impact” that leads to “meaningful, measurable, and positive change.”

In a Times column, Sorkin once described McGlashan as resembling “a Buddhist monk” more than “a cigar-chomping banker in pinstripes.” Now, improbably bundled against the cold in both a vest and a parka, McGlashan was swathed in a sea of gray down. Bono, sporting his signature black leather jacket and purple spectacles, recounted how he and McGlashan came up with their vision for Rise, which has invested in everything from supporting small dairy farms in India to expanding financial access to the poor in Nigeria.

“We had this wild and crazy idea that capitalism—this tool that had taken more people out of extreme poverty than any other ‘ism’—could perhaps be deployed to support the work I was doing trying to get people out of extreme poverty,” Bono Bill McGlashan (center) left Bono’s Rise Fund after he was charged with paying fixer William Singer (right) to get his son into U.S.C. explained. “But he”—gesturing to McGlashan—“also accepted that it’s a wild beast and, if not tamed, can and has chewed up a lot of lives.”