Facebook IPO boosts Mark Zuckerberg’s Dollar worth – Part 1

The largest online social network in the world has now taken a big stride to get into the corporate world. After being surrounded by rumours for almost a year since the first word got out of Facebook’s headquarters, Mark Zuckerberg and company filed for their initial public offering at the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Facebook, or soon to become Facebook, Inc. (FB) IPOmay value Zuckerberg’s stake at $28.4 billion, making him richer than Google, Inc.’s co-founders and almost on par with Larry Ellison, who started Oracle Corp. 35 years ago.

The 27-year-old founder and chief executive officer of Facebook is the company’s top stakeholder as it prepares to go public, with 533.8 million shares, or 28.4 percent, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. Investment firms Accel Partners and Digital Sky Technologies own a combined 16.8 percent.

Facebook said in its prospectus that it plans to raise as much as $5 billion in an IPO. The California-based company is discussing a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion, two people familiar with the matter said last week. At the top end of that range, Zuckerberg will own stock worth $28.4 billion. His command of the company goes beyond stock — he controls 56.9 percent of the voting power.

“It looks from this as if Zuckerberg is maintaining a lot of control,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at Altimeter Group in New York. “He’s shown a great deal of wisdom and maturity in bringing the company to this level of stability and profitability before going public.”

By comparison, Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page are each worth more than $15 billion based on their ownership of that company’s shares. Ellison, 67, owns stock worth about $31 billion in Oracle, the software company he founded in 1977.

While Facebook shareholders are poised for riches, they won’t be able to start selling until the expiration of the so- called lockup period, in some cases six months after the shares begin trading. Zuckerberg may sell stock as part of the IPO, the company said in the filing.

Excluding Zuckerberg’s ownership, the combined value of Facebook stock held by everyone else is $71.6 billion, based on a $100 billion valuation.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Feb 3 2012. Filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.