In addition, competition authorities in the United States, Europe, and other jurisdictions have initiated formal and informal inquiries and investigations into many aspects of our business, including with respect to users and advertisers, as well as our industry. For example, in June 2019 we were informed by the FTC that it had opened an antitrust investigation of our company. In addition, beginning in the third quarter of 2019, we became the subject of antitrust inquiries and investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. House of Representatives, and state attorneys general. These inquiries and investigations concern, among other things, our business practices in the areas of social networking or social media services, digital advertising, and/or mobile or online applications, as well as past acquisitions.
I’ve got a poker dealer posting screenshots of his stock moves, someone telling him they day traded one stock for a 50% gain in a day, and agreeing to text each other tips.
I’ve got another guy in there guaranteeing a double up on AirBNB by next summer.
Congrats to the very deserving wealthy bros who got to get in at $68 for totally reasonable and virtuous reasons, who will see a nice little 121% 24 hour return on investment.
I just want to be the first to thank them for their service in evaluating this company and kicking the tires for us dumbass plebes who aren’t smart enough to figure that out. Thanks, billionaire bros!
FB isn’t going down because market knows nothing really bad will happen to them. Even if forced to divest Instagram/WhatsApp, which is a long shot, that value doesn’t just disappear, current shareholders get stock in the spinoffs or proceeds from sale of those companies to third parties.
Only thing that directly reduces value is fines and those will be single digit billions at most.
Just a huge huge LOL at defending this shit. The workers who own stock get screwed, the average investor who wants a piece gets screwed, and really I can’t emphasize this enough:
If you can’t figure out how super duper VIPs buying something for half price on Wednesday just because they’re mega connected and uber wealthy and selling it for a 100% ROI on Thursday is wrong, I can’t help you.
The low level workers collectively own a trivial portion of the pre-IPO of the stock in options, give me a fucking break that is who you are crying about here.
It’s the venture capitalist bros who own the vast majority of the non-management pre-IPO stock and they are fine with it for whatever reason.
No matter which way you slice it, a bunch of ultra connected mega wealthy people get to make ungodly huge returns in a day with an opportunity that is not available to others.
Twisting yourself around to argue in favor of the billionaires deserving this opportunity by virtue of their whatever is ridiculous as is pretending nobody else gets harmed in any way.
If you cannot see that is wrong for folks like Peter Thiel to seemingly give away some of his equity to other super rich people, then I cannot help you.
Um, I think it’s more bizarre than wrong so I guess you can’t help me.
Matt Levine has some great stuff about the IPO pop. See here for example (much more at the link, this is just an intro):
I happen to think that there are good reasons for this system, and that it mostly works well for companies and their pre-IPO investors. (Which is why it’s been the almost universal way that companies have gone public for many decades.) Companies want good relationships with their shareholders over the long run, so it is nice for them to introduce themselves to the market in a way that makes the market happy. Early investors tend to hold onto their shares for some time after the IPO, so they want the stock to trade well. And, as I argued the other day, the systematic underpricing of IPOs is what convinces big investors to pay attention to smallish risky new companies; the fact that most IPOs go up is the reason that Fidelity is coming to your $2 billion company’s roadshow. Venture capitalists are giving up first-day gains on most of their stocks, but that buys them a system in which they can easily take lots of companies public at attractive valuations.
But I am a former capital markets banker, so I am biased. A lot of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs really do not like the tradition of the IPO pop and would prefer to sell their stock at much closer to the real market price, and I cannot really say that they’re wrong.
