Bret Pearlman, co-founder of private equity firm Elevation Partners, says that social networking website Facebook.com may make a good initial public offering candidate in a few years, if it continues to grow.

Rock and roll icon Bono may seem like an unlikely asset for a private equity fund, but he helps win business and close deals, says Bret Pearlman, co-founder of Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that Bono helped found. The rock and roller usually participates in Elevation’s weekly meetings for partners, Pearlman adds.

Some radio purists argue that the industry is facing trouble now because of lousy programming. Scott Sperling, co-president at Thomas H. Lee Partners, a buyout firm that is hoping to buy Clear Channel Communications Inc. says Clear Channel radio’s real problem is a broad decline in radio advertising that has little to do with programming.

Phillip Maisano, head of alternative investments at Mellon Asset Management, thinks that merger arbitrage funds are worth looking at now, as merger activity runs at a record pace.

Bret Pearlman, managing director and co-founder of private equity firm Elevation Partners, sees magazines as a more attractive investment than newspapers. In this sound clip, he explains why.

High net worth individuals are giving more of a look at socially responsible investments, albeit for small portions of their portfolios, consultants to the private banking industry said at the Reuters Wealth Management Summit.  
    Socially responsible investing can take many forms, ranging from funds that refrain from investing in munitions makers to environmental funds that hold land and grow timber to religious funds that avoid companies like alcohol distillers. 
    “It’s a generational change. The Woodstock generation made their wealth, but now they’re saying, ‘what are we going to do with it?,’” said Bertrand Lavayssiere, managing director at consultancy Capgemini. 
    So far, investors that do make socially responsible investments typically allocate around 5 percent of their portfolio to the area, said Sebastian Dovey, managing partner at Scorpio.  
    But for individuals deeply committed to socially responsible investing, that can range up to 100 percent, Dovey added.

Dresdner Bank AG has opened a private banking office in Monaco, to serve clients buying second homes or retiring there.

Another area that’s interesting for similar reasons is Marbella, Spain, Simonet said at the Reuters Wealth Management Summit.

“We need to be where clients are,” said Anton Simonet, head of private wealth management at Dresdner.  

Citigroup is looking to increase its private banking business in countries including Spain, Italy, and Germany, to name a few. 

But France is conspicuous in its absence.

Its a very difficult market to penetrate,? said Marianne Hay, chief executive office for global wealth management-Europe at Citi.

French private banking clients are usually served by French banks, and even banks that have been in France for decades are seen as outsiders, Hay said.   

UniCredit has opened up a new front in the war for private banking talent in Europe: universities.  

The Italian bank has set up a two-year private banking masters’ program, said Dario Prunotto, managing director for UniCredit’s private banking operations in Italy. A total of seventy UniCredit employees are in the program now.

The Singapore government took a similar step in 2004, when it set up a master of science program at Singapore Management University.

As the ranks of the wealthy grow, banks are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit private bankers. The demand for talent is pulling retail and investment bankers into private banking, and making compensation packages in the area increasingly rich. 

The pace of innovation in Islamic banking is as rapid as the changes seen in the derivatives world in the 1980’s, said Thomas Kalaris, chief executive of wealth management at Barclays. 

“Islamic lending is here to stay,” Kalaris said. 

With recent years’ increases in oil prices, a growing number of high net worth individuals are based in the Middle East, and adhere to Islamic laws that forbid lending with interest.