The reports suggests strongly that this week Facebook will begin the process of turning into a publicly listed company, and value of the social networking giant is predicted to be anywhere between $75bn (£48bn) and $100bn .
It has been reported by the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal that the company is planning to file papers with the US financial watchdog on Wednesday. It has been the estimated that the flotation which would transpire later this year, will raise somewhere around $10bn.
The sale will be one of the biggest share sale ever witnessed on the Wall Street. The otherwise enormous $1.9 billion raised by Google in 2004, when it went public, now seems to be too meager in front of Facebook. However, the giant feet achieved by Facebook still falls short of the $20bn which the General Motors raised, back in November 2010.
The reports have also suggested on the role of Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter of the entire sale and that Goldman Sachs will be involved highly in the entire process.
It is sort of interesting that how the rumors were making the rounds that Facebook is going public and is planning and Initial Public Offering, yet the company chose not to reply but now the valuation, as the experts report, will make Facebook the biggest companies adjudged by the market capitalization.
“Facebook a brilliant achievement, but $75-$100bn? Would make Apple look really cheap,” said Rupert Murdoch on Twitter.
The company which was the brain the child of maverick Mark Zuckerberg and along with him his fellow students at Harvard University played a key role in the development of Facebook in 2004. It has now grown up to the biggest social network and makes most of its money through advertising. Though Facebook is a private company, it need not reveal its accounts, but last year reports in the month of January sent by Goldman Sachs showed that the firm has made a net profit of $355m and the total revenues earned were $1.2bn and that too in the first nine months of 2010.
