James Delahunty
17 May 2012 17:19
Facebook in third largest public offering in U.S. history.
Only General Motors and Visa could beat Facebook's initial public offering, which valued the social networking giant at an enormous $104 billion. The service raised $16 billion today as investors rushed to get shares after waiting years for Facebook to finally make the leap.
It's market value is now higher than that of McDonald's, Citigroup and Amazon.com, with investors paying $38 per share. "Facebook is here to stay," said Navin Chaddha, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm.
"It's a virtual economy where people are spending more time than any other Internet property."
Facebook insiders and early investors are set to cash in quickly. Last year, Goldman Sachs took a stake in Facebook, and is now set to sell off a third of that stake. Peter Thiel, the VC who backed Facebook in its early days, will sell 16.8 million shares.
Mark Zuckerberg is set to ring the opening bell for the Nasdaq from Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Friday. Facebook shares will sell to the public later in the day, under the ticker FB.