Facebook Ipo
Reacting to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal scoop that Facebook was looking at the April to June 2012 timeframe to raise $10 billion in an IPO, reporters and analysts were quick to point out their lack of surprise. As many noted, Facebook is required to file financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission when the number of private shareholders tops 500. Facebook has indicated that it will exceed that number by the end of the 2011 calendar year, meaning that the company would have to file with the SEC by April 30, 2012, whether it is public or not. Yet even after citing this fact, the tech media has lifted Facebook’s IPO talk to “cacophonous levels,” in the words of VentureBeat. It could be the IPO offering amount cited by The Journal: $10 billion. An offering of that size would raise more money than any other technology IPO, says Bloomberg, which lists the current record holder, Infineon Technologies AG, at the comparatively puny amount of $5.23 billion