facebook inversion

ver nota

18.05.2012

Facebook readies for richest tech IPO

Facebook has sold shares for $38 (around 30 euros) ahead of its initial public offering. The US social network begins trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday.

Facebook announced on Thursday that it sold shares to investors for $38 ahead of the Initial Public Offering (IPO). It had priced the shares at $34-$38. The company and its early investors could reap $18.4 billion, which would give it a market value of around $104 billion.

It is the largest-ever IPO for an Internet company. It's also the third-largest IPO in US history, only surpassed by the initial public offerings of two Chinese banks.

Due to strong demand from investors, Facebook increased the price earlier in the week, which had stood at $28-$35, as well as boosting the number of shares it was selling by 25 percent to 421 million shares. Aktogether it is floating 15 percent of its shares.

The pre-IPO sale makes the company worth more than Hewlett-Packard and Dell together.

Google had sold shares for $1.7 billion when it went public in 2004, valuing the company at $23 billion. It's currently valued at around $200 billion.

On Friday morning, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell from the company's California headquarters.

ncy/bk (dapd, AP, Reuters)

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