Facebook's Goldman Deal Is Another Sign of a Comatose IPO Market

Goldman's Stinky Facebook Deal
Got two different notes from readers this morning about this latest Goldman gambit involving Facebook shares. It seems that Goldman has set up a "special purpose vehicle" and alerted top clients that through this SPV they will have the opportunity to invest in an as-yet-unnamed company, which reportedly is Facebook. The way this looks to Felix Salmon over at Reuters, and his explanation makes a lot of sense to me, is that this SPV is potentially a way around SEC reporting requirements for public...

Goldman, Digital Sky invest in Facebook: source
By Alexei Oreskovic and Nadia Damouni San Francisco/NEW YORK | Mon Jan 3, 2011 7:25pm EST San Francisco/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, in a deal that values the world's No.1 Internet Social Networking company at $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The firms also plan to raise at least $1 billion in additional funding for Facebook, the person said speaking on condition of an...

Goldman, Digital Sky invest in Facebook: source
By Alexei Oreskovic and Nadia Damouni San Francisco/NEW YORK | Mon Jan 3, 2011 7:25pm EST San Francisco/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, in a deal that values the world's No.1 Internet Social Networking company at $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The firms also plan to raise at least $1 billion in additional funding for Facebook, the person said speaking on condition of an...

Goldman's "friends" get week to mull Facebook bet
By Joseph A. Giannone and Matthew Goldstein NEW YORK | Wed Jan 5, 2011 8:11am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs is not giving its multimillionaire clients a lot of time or information to think about investing in a $1.5 billion Facebook private offering. According to a customer who received a letter from Goldman, clients were given just until the end of this week to decide whether they want a piece of the Social Networking giant. The world's largest Investment Bank this week agreed to inv...

Is Facebook Goldman Deal A Loser For NASDAQ NYSE?
When news of Goldman Sachs $2 billion investment in Facebook first broke, many interpreted it as the final sign of an imminent IPO. Goldman was injecting cash into Facebook on favorable terms in order to win itself the inside track to manage the IPO, many reasoned. But NYU Professor Scott Galloway has an intruiging theory. He says we may be seeing the emergence of a new, semiprivate IPO. In this model, a small group of blue-chip investors get a piece of Facebook. Shares become more liquid, e...

Facebook-Goldman Sachs Deal Could Be A Test For The SEC
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (By Joseph A. Giannone and Sarah N. Lynch): The efforts by Facebook to raise as much as $1.5 billion outside of regulated markets is the latest test of the walls between private and public markets. Goldman Sachs this week approached its best private wealth clients with a tantalizing offer: a special fund that will own shares in the fast-growing Social Networking giant. Goldman gets to offer clients a hot investment opportunity, while Facebook gets to remain a private compan...

Goldman Just Bought The Zynga IPO, Too
Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. Goldman's already got the guy on the left. How about the guy on the right? Word has it Russian holding firm DST actually brought Goldman into the Facebook deal, and that it's all part of planning for an IPO. This makes sense, because DST is particularly tight with Goldman. Did you know that DST is also invested in Groupon and Zynga, two other huge startups looking to IPO soon? While Groupon is backed by Morgan Stanley, and therefore already ha...

The SEC's Facebook problem
The SEC's challenge in the secondary market January 4, 2011 1:34 PM SecondMarket, Sharespost, NYPPEX all let wealthy investors treat private companies, like Facebook, as publicly traded ones. Are they flouting securities laws, or reinventing them for the 21st century? By Kevin Kelleher, contributor Sorry, small investors. If you want to buy shares in Facebook, Groupon or Twitter, you're going to have to wait until their IPOs. That much is certain now that the Securities and Exchange Commissi...

Friends With Benefits
William D. Cohan on Wall Street and Main Street. Tags: Facebook, Goldman Sachs Can Goldman Sachs, the profit-seeking missile of high finance, really...

Analysis: Facebook fund tests SEC resolve
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The efforts by Facebook to raise as much as $1.5 billion outside of regulated markets is the latest test of the walls between private and public markets. Goldman Sachs this week approached its best private wealth clients with a tantalizing offer: a special fund that will own shares in the fast-growing Social Networking giant. Goldman gets to offer clients a hot investment opportunity, while Facebook gets to remain a private company. It is the latest in a growing ...

Facebook-Goldman loser: IPO 'industry'
Scott Galloway, the Red Envelope founder who currently teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, this morning went on Bloomberg TV to discuss Goldman Sachs' investment in Facebook. He believes that we'll see deals like this in the future, and that they basically represent private IPOs (no matter how paradoxical such a term might be). He's hardly the first to say this, but I don't think anyone else has channeled Eisenhower: "I think that the SEC, the NYSE, the NASDAQ and the whole&#...

Tech takeovers expected to soar with cloud demand
Technology companies, which fueled more than $100 billion in acquisitions last year, are expected to spend more in 2011 in a race to harness surging demand for Cloud Computing and security services. Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. led purchases of more than 2,700 companies and still spent only a fraction of the cash piles they accumulated during the Recession. The Dollar amount of announced tech deals gained 12 percent, lagging behind a 26 percent jump in worldwide mergers, acco...

Social Network: Tech Bubble 2.0? (GS)
But the real eye popping fact is that this latest deal values Facebook at $50 billion. That’s right, $50 billion, which is more than the current Market Cap of Time Warner, Baidu, Yahoo, and almost twice that of Dell, Inc. Even though Facebook is not publicly traded, the company has raise about $850 million to date in total through a secondary market. Facebook’s value reportedly has roughly tripled over the last year--not bad for a company that’s only in business for six years....

Five reasons why I'm not buying Facebook
Before you start scrambling to get a piece of the Facebook pie, it's worth looking at a few glaring Risk Factors. Would you give this guy $2 million? Excuse me for raining on the Facebook parade, but yesterday's news about the $450 million investment by Goldman Sachs (GS) and $50 million from Russia's Digital Sky Technology didn't move me the way it seemed to move others. This despite the suggested $50 billion valuation, as big and beautiful a number as the Stock Market has seen in some time. I...

Goldman, Digital Sky invest in Facebook: source
San Francisco/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facebook has raised $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Russian Investment Firm Digital Sky Technologies, in a deal that values the world's No.1 Internet Social Networking company at $50 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The firms also plan to raise at least $1 billion in additional funding for Facebook, the person said speaking on condition of anonymity. The funding, which gives Facebook a richer valuation than established Internet gian...

Facebook finds powerful 'friend' in Goldman Sachs
Social-networking giant Facebook could flex its growing might after reportedly raising 500 million US dollars from Goldman Sachs and a Russian firm in a deal valuing the website at 50 billion US dollars. The New York Times, citing sources familiar with the deal, reported Monday that Goldman had invested 450 million US dollars in Facebook and Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian Investment Firm that has already sunk about half a billion US dollars into Facebook, invested 50 million US dollars. Fac...

Will Goldman employees be allowed in Facebook round?
When Goldman Sachs begins soliciting $1.5 billion for Facebook, one call it won't be making is to its own employees. This time last year, it looked like Wall Street was about to be ejected from the "equity" part of Private Equity. Early versions of Financial Reform Legislation included the so-called Volcker Rule, which would have prohibited banks from sponsoring or managing private equity funds (among other prohibitions). Bank employees would not be allowed to invest in the fund, unless they ar...

SEC may force Facebook flotation
Source: The Guardian Facebook might be forced by US Regulators to take the Social Networking company public as new investors pile in "It's a lot easier to go public than to be public," observed Veteran technology investor Frank Quattrone last year. That insight might prove doubly prophetic for Facebook, which is under fresh scrutiny about when it might take – or be forced to take – the Social Networking company public following a fresh $500m (£320m) round of investment led by Goldman Sachs th

Goldman's "friends" get week to mull Facebook bet
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs is not giving its multimillionaire clients a lot of time or information to think about investing in a $1.5 billion Facebook private offering. According to a customer who received a letter from Goldman, clients were given just until the end of this week to decide whether they want a piece of the Social Networking giant. The world's largest Investment Bank this week agreed to invest $475 million into Facebook and initiated plans to raise as much as $1.5 billion ...

Goldman's "friends" get week to mull Facebook bet
By Joseph A. Giannone and Matthew Goldstein NEW YORK | Tue Jan 4, 2011 4:25pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs is not giving its multimillionaire clients a lot of time or information to think about investing in a $1.5 billion Facebook private offering. According to a customer who received a letter from Goldman, clients were given just until the end of this week to decide whether they want a piece of the Social Networking giant. The world's largest Investment Bank this week agreed to inv...

US probe after Goldman investment in Facebook
A Goldman Sachs investment of nearly half a billion dollars into Facebook has spawned a Probe by US Regulators eager to safeguard the dividing line between public and private companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. US media earlier this week said that investment giant Goldman had poured 450 million dollars into Facebook and that a Russian Investment Firm, Digital Sky Technologies, sank another 50 million dollars into the Social Networking site. The Journal reported however th...

Facebook raises $500M from Goldman Sachs
Social Networking site valued at $50B © Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press Facebook has raised $500 million US from Goldman Sachs and a Russian Investment Firm in a deal that values the company at $50 billion. Facebook has raised $500 million US from Goldman Sachs and a Russian Investment Firm in a deal that values the social networking site at $50 billion, the New York Times reports. Goldman invested $450 million and Digital Sky Technologies invested $50 million, the newspaper reported Sunday ...

What Goldman-Facebook deal means
What does Goldman's investment in Facebook mean? Posted by Dan Primack January 3, 2011 7:29 am Facebook has raised $500 million in new "Venture Capital" at a $50 billion valuation, according to a report late last night from DealBook. Not sure if the $50 billion is a pre-money or post-money mark, but I'm also not sure if such niggling details matter at such a nose-bleedingly high stratosphere. What interests me most here are the buyers and the sellers, as they related to a pair of related con...

Morning Roundup: Americans Love a Good Bankruptcy
Goldman Sachs' investment in Facebook may help the social-networking site escape the added regulatory scrutiny that comes with an IPO. [NYT] On the other hand, the Securities and Exchange Commission is already conducting an inquiry into Goldman's plan to give its clients access to Facebook shares. Regulatory scrutiny may come one way or another. [Bloomberg] Many — as in 1.53 million — U.S. consumers filed for Bankruptcy in 2010. That's 9 percent more than the year before and also ...

15 mistakes young entrepreneurs make, but don't have to
(I originally published this at my blog infinitetoventure.com in 3 separate posts. Go check it out!) If you're an entrepreneur, you're probably going to screw up at some point. That's ok. Entrepreneurship is a constant process of quickly testing hypotheses, failing, refining and testing again. If you're not failing, you're not learning, right? Well, not all fails are created equal. Some are wholly unnecessary, and I'd like to list my top 15 here. Note that many of these are based on advice from ...