Geldof's Africa private equity fund nears $200 million (Reuters)

ZURICH (Reuters Life!) – Bob Geldof, the former Boomtown Rats singer and Live Aid front man, said a private equity fund he agreed to front last year to invest in Africa was nearing its first close, having raised nearly $200 million.

Geldof helped organize the 1985 Live Aid concert, which reached an estimated 1.5 billion people and did much to raise the profile of those suffering from poverty, starvation and disease in Africa.

Geldof said the private equity fund, called 8 Miles, which represents the shortest distance between Europe and North Africa, had attracted increasing attention because of what he called an existential fiscal crisis in the euro zone.

"It's all about globalization. Without Africa, this whole game stops," Geldof told delegates at a Julius Baer investor conference in Zurich, focusing on growth. "Last month, of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world, six were African."

Private equity funds often close to new investors as they deploy the money already gathered, because holding on to large amounts of idle cash while they choose their investments can create a drag on performance.

Geldof said he agreed to help raise money for the fund late last year after discussions with Phillip Pritchard, Chief Executive of CLSA, an Asian brokerage and investment company arm formerly called Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia.

He said that while Africa was currently seeing huge investment from China and other nations anxious to access its raw materials, the continent had the chance to become a productive global powerhouse.

"Currently 80 percent of exports from Africa are unprocessed raw materials. There's your opportunity: they need manufacturing," Geldof said.

"We need their brains and their muscle power, because we're growing older," he said, adding that by 2020, Africa will have a larger young working population than China or India.

"They are connected (to the global economy) now and cannot be disconnected," he said.

(Reporting by Martin de Sa'Pinto; Editing by Will Waterman)

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All eyes on Beyonce as muddy Glastonbury nears end (Reuters)

PILTON, England (Reuters) – Pop star Beyonce takes the main stage at Glastonbury on Sunday as the closing act, hoping to repeat husband Jay-Z's success in 2008 and help a huge crowd banish thoughts of mud and the long trip home.

Around 180,000 people crammed on to Worthy Farm in picturesque southwest England for three days of music and fun at one of the world's biggest music festivals. The abiding memory for many this year will be the mud.

Heavy rain on Friday and before turned the 900 acre site into a giant bog, but it failed to dampen the mood among music lovers who came to see a bewildering choice of hundreds of acts across dozens of stages.

"We managed to survive in the most adverse conditions," said festival founder Michael Eavis. "We are survivors, after 41 years," he told reporters.

The sunshine broke out on Sunday and bikinis replaced raincoats as the festival geared up for its Sunday night climax.

Jay-Z headlined in 2008, causing controversy among some of British rock's biggest names who said hip-hop had no place at the revered event. But the performer silenced his critics and rap is now a major part of the Glastonbury schedule.

Fans speculated that Jay-Z might join Beyonce on stage and that she may also reunite with members of her former band Destiny's Child.

Eavis was briefly distracted by questions about the death of a senior member of Britain's ruling Conservative Party, who was found in a luxury accommodation area on Sunday morning.

He did not name the deceased, but British media said he was Christopher Shale, chairman of West Oxfordshire Conservative Association. Initial reports gave the cause of death as a heart attack, but Eavis said he understood it was suicide.

U2 PROTEST GRABS HEADLINES

Friday night's headliners U2 impressed critics with a string of their greatest hits performed in the driving rain.

A small pressure group called Art Uncut inflated a large balloon with the words "U Pay Tax 2?" in protest against the band's decision several years ago to relocate its operations from Ireland to the Netherlands for tax purposes.

Campaigners complained of rough handling by security guards who forced them to take the balloon down, but Eavis shrugged off the criticism, saying the story had been exaggerated.

"It was only one balloon," he said. "It was all churned up as being a huge thing, but it wasn't at all."

"We didn't want to upset anyone," he said, adding that U2 lead singer Bono had been aware of the protest. "It was all done very, very gently."

Coldplay played the main Pyramid stage slot on Saturday, watched by tens of thousands of people as they worked their way through a set of songs old and new.

Pulp were surprise guests on the smaller The Park stage, and drew a record crowd there of around 30,000. London rapper Tinie Tempah was one of the most popular performers this year, as were the Chemical Brothers, blues veteran B.B. King and Elbow.

Glastonbury has grown from a humble gathering of 1,500 people on Eavis's dairy farm in 1970, each paying one pound ($1.60) and receiving free milk, to a giant celebration of music costing 195 pounds for a basic ticket.

There will be no festival in 2012, but Eavis said he already had three major acts lined up for 2013.

(Editing by Jan Harvey)

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Apple nears cloud music service with label deals (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc is close to launching an online music storage and streaming service after reaching deals with three of the four major labels and is expected to wrap up the fourth in a few days, according to several people familiar the plans.

The iPhone and iPad maker completed work on the new service a while back, according to two people, and will beat Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc in the bid to launch a comprehensive 'cloud' music service. The iTunes cloud-based service will offer users the ability to buy, store and stream favorite songs and albums wherever they have an Internet connection on any device.

Warner Music Group Corp was the first to reach a cloud deal with Apple more than two weeks ago and was followed by EMI Group and Sony Corp's Sony Music Entertainment more recently, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, the largest music company in the world, is "within days of putting pen to paper on the new cloud service," said a fourth person.

Spokespeople for Apple and the labels all declined to comment.

The big technology companies are vying to be leaders in new ways for fans to access songs and videos. As the sales of physical media such CDs and DVDs fall rapidly, the tech giants are betting they can sell media subscriptions, software and innovative devices linked to these services.

While Amazon is the leading e-reader maker, Apple and Google are competing on mobile platforms for smartphones and tablet devices.

Apple has discussed plans for a cloud-based iTunes service on and off over the last year with the labels. It stepped up negotiations recently, according to these people. It is now expected that Apple will likely be in a position to announce its cloud music plans in time for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6.

Steve Jobs, Apple's founder, has in the past unveiled products, including the iPhone 4, at the WWDC.

There is a chance the new music service could be ready to launch by June 6, but it would also need deals with song publishers. Apple has opened talks with some publishers, according to two people.

Amazon and Google launched music locker services in the past few weeks without new licensing agreements, leading to threats of legal action from some music companies. At the time, Amazon argued its Cloud Drive service does not need licenses and said uploaded music belongs to the users, something the labels dispute.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; additional reporting from Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; editing by Andre Grenon)

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